Mark Edmondson is the last Australian man to win his country’s Grand Slam. He achieved this feat in 1976 when he was ranked only number 212 in the world. Weeks before he lifted the trophy at Melbourne’s Kooyong Club – convincingly beating two legends of the game, Ken Rosewall and John Newcombe, along the way – ‘Edo’ was washing windows and bathrooms at the hospital where his sister worked. The exclusive, soft O The room where we met next to Rod Laver Arena couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to Edmondson’s pre-Australian Open championship life.
Our meeting time was set for January 28 at 4:45pm, the location was initially to be determined by my Tennis Australia handler Nadia and Mark’s handler Stewart. Nadia and I met on the steps of Margaret Court Arena and showed our badges several times before reaching the inner sanctum to end all inner sanctums, and not just for VIPs, but according to the people who created the space: O is by invitation only for VVIPs. In other words, you can’t buy in.
Wearing sneakers and overly casual Athleta pants and top, I was vastly underdressed compared to the neatly pressed, highly polished crowd. O exuded rare gravity, a point driven home by glimpses of 18-time singles and doubles major champion Ken Rosewall and Margaret Court, who has a record 64 major singles, doubles and mixed titles. I thought about approaching Ken to say how much it meant to me to play with him 32 years ago when I last covered the Australian Open, but he looked quite weak and I had to get to Mark in time. Yet, at 91, “Muscles” seems to have the same friendly, gracious attitude as ever.
After ducking into the bathroom to take off my baseball cap and do my hair, Nadia and Stewart helped me find a quiet enough table outside. Less than a minute later, Mark came forward, glass of white wine in hand. He immediately mentioned that he had just done an interview about the 50th anniversary of his unexpected title with a German magazine that was also celebrating its 50th year of existence, and asked me if World Tennis Magazine was still in print (which it isn’t… it’s a completely different entity from the legendary title of years past).
After introducing myself, I said I’d like to start the interview with the build-up to his legendary victory in 1976, and he replied, “Well, first I’d like to start a few years earlier, when I was a teenager and trying to get money to go play in Europe, so I worked at my father’s construction company and saved $1,000 to buy my plane ticket and have some left over to eat and travel. After landing in Britain, I rented I got a car with a few other players and we slept in it until we got a van. Much better to get some rest.”
So he started looking for ranking points, playing tournaments in France – “because I have to go to France” – and visiting other countries along the way, until his pockets were empty. The ranking points he did accumulate would help him narrowly earn a place on the Kooyong courts two years later and, five decades later, his rightful place in the rarefied air at O.
In 1975, “Edo” made it through the qualifying rounds at the Australian Indoors and later at Wimbledon, earning just 11 ATP ranking points. These points translated into a No. 212 ATP ranking, making him one of the last, if not the last, player to gain entry into the main draw of the 1976 Australian Open, as many international players withdrew from the tournament. The first round started on Boxing Day, December 26, 1975, and the AO was more of a blip on the calendar and certainly not the unmissable event it is today. He may have entered Melbourne’s grass courts as the player least likely to win, but his grit – honed on the public courts of his hometown of Gosford and in countless odd jobs – proved as important as his serve.
“I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I served fantastically. I just went out there and tried to win the serve,” Edmondson recalled, as he fought mightily in the first round to beat Peter Feigl in five sets. Next up was No. 5 seed and compatriot Phil Dent, whom he upset in four sets on an “unreliable outdoor court, with more bad bounces than top players might have been used to.”
Not Edmondson, who went on to battle tough New Zealand journeyman Brian Fairlie. “I managed to beat him. I think maybe on the same outdoor court. Four sets. Then I got to the quarter-finals and that was on center court, which I hadn’t been to before, and I was playing against Dick Crealy, who came second in 1970, I think… a big, strong, hard-working man and I managed to beat him in straight sets in a very, very tight three-set match.”
He continued: “And then I get to the semi-final to play Rosewall and I thought, that’s it.” Not so fast. Edmondson even surprised himself with his decisive and stunning 6-1, 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 victory against the top seed and an all-time great win to set up a final showdown against another Australian legend, seven-time champion Newcombe.
I asked him if he had played Newcombe before. “No, but that was good for me because I had seen him, I knew how he played and he had no idea how I played, what things I would do. He had a great serve and volley game. All I wanted to do, I just wanted to win my serve and see what happened.”
The final started in scorching 40°C heat, with dozens of spectators treated for heat exhaustion, before taking a violent turn when a sudden storm arrived, forcing play to be suspended for 30 minutes, with the match even ending at one set apiece and 6-6 in the third. Play resumed in cooler, gusty conditions and Edmondson held his nerve and remained aggressive. He defeated Newcombe 7-4 in the tiebreak and then took full control in the fourth set to win 6-7, 6-3, 7-6, 6-1, without losing serve once.
Me: “How much did your life change after you won?”
“Well, I won $5,000 Australian dollars (about $35,000 in today’s US dollars). But it wasn’t about the money, it was more about the points. I suddenly went from No. 212 to No. 56 in the world, and that allowed me to play bigger tournaments against the best players in the world and build a career as a professional tennis player, which I had always hoped for.”
That unprecedented leap from surviving in Europe to lifting the Australian Open trophy still resonates fifty years later. And with Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner dominating at the top of the men’s game and fellow Australian Alex de Minaur aiming to reach their level, it is likely that Mark Edmondson will remain the last Australian man to win his home Slam for years to come.
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