By Kelley Busby
Mark Edmondson is the last Australian male to win his country’s Grand Slam, accomplishing this feat in 1976 when he was ranked just No. 212 in the world. Weeks before hoisting the trophy at the Kooyong Club in Melbourne — and soundly 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, cushy O space where we met up 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 4:45 PM on January 28, location 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 multiple times before reaching the inner sanctum to end all inner sanctums, and not just for VIP’s, but according to the people who created the space, O is exclusively invitation-only for VVIP’s. In other words, you can’t buy your way in.
Wearing sneakers and too-casual Athleta pants and top, I was wildly underdressed compared to the neatly pressed, highly polished crowd. O exuded rare gravitas, a point driven home upon glimpsing 18-time singles and doubles major champion Ken Rosewall and Margaret Court, who holds a record 64 major titles in singles, doubles and mixed. I thought about approaching Ken to say how much it meant to me to hit with him 32 years ago when I last covered the Australian Open, but he looked quite frail and I had to get to Mark on time. Still, at 91 years old, “Muscles” seems to have the same kind, gracious demeanor as always.
After ducking to the bathroom to take off my baseball cap and neaten up my hair, Nadia and Stewart helped me find a quiet enough table outside. Not even a minute later, Mark walked up, glass of white wine in hand. He immediately shared 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’s not…it’s a completely different entity than the legendary title from years past.)
After introducing myself, I said I’d love to begin the interview with the lead up to his legendary 1976 win, and he replied, “Well first, I’d like to start a few years earlier, when I was still a teenager trying to get money to go play in Europe so worked at my dad‘s construction company and saved $1,000 to buy my plane ticket and have a bit leftover to eat and travel. After landing in the UK, I rented a car with a few other players and we slept in it until we got a van. Much better to get some rest.”
So off he went, in search of ranking points, playing tournaments in France—“because I’ve got to go to France”—and seeing other countries along the way, until his pockets were empty. The ranking points he did muster would, two years later, would help him barely earn him a place on the courts at Kooyong and, five decades later, to his rightful place in the rarified air at O.
In 1975, “Edo” got through the qualifying rounds at the Australian Indoors and later at Wimbledon to earn just 11 ATP ranking points. These points translated to a No. 212 ATP ranking which made 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 bowed out of the tournament. The first round started on Boxing Day, December 26, 1975 and the AO was more of an outlier on the calendar and certainly not the can’t miss event it is today. He may have walked onto the grass courts in Melbourne as the player least likely to win, but his grit—shaped on public courts of his hometown of Gosford and in numerous odd jobs —proved just as important as his serve.
“I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was serving fantastic. I just went out and tried to win the serve,” Edmondson recalled, fighting mightily in the first round to defeat Peter Feigl in five sets.Up next was No. 5 seed and fellow Aussie Phil Dent, who he upset in four sets on a “dodgy outside court, with more bad bounces than maybe top players were used to.”
Not Edmondson, who next took on tough New Zealand journeyman Brian Fairlie. “I managed to beat him. I think maybe on the same outside court. Four sets. Then I got to in the quarters and that was on the center court, which I hadn’t been on before, and I played Dick Crealy, who was runner up in like 1970, I think…big, strong, hard hitting guy and I managed to beat him in straight sets in a very, very tight three-set match.”
He continued, “And then I’m in the semis to play Rosewall, which I thought, well, that’s it.” Not so fast. In fact, Edmondson surprised himself with his decisive and stunning 6-1, 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 victory against the top-seed and all-time great to set up a final showdown against another Aussie legend, seven-time major champion Newcombe.
I asked him if he’d played Newcombe before. “No, but that was good for me, because I’d seen him, I knew how he played and he had no idea how I played, what things that 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 opened under scorching 104°F heat, with dozens of spectators treated for heat exhaustion, then swung violently as a sudden storm rolled in, forcing a 30-minute suspension of play, with the match dead even at one set a piece and 6-6 in the third. Play resumed in cooler, gusty conditions and Edmondson held his nerve and stayed aggressive — edging Newcombe 7-4 in the tiebreak then taking complete control in the fourth set to win 6-7, 6-3, 7-6, 6-1, not once losing his serve.
Me: “How much did your life change after you won?”
“Well, I won $5,000 Australian dollars (roughly $35,000 in today’s U.S. dollars). But it wasn’t the money, it was more the points. I suddenly went from No. 212 to No. 56 in the world, and that enabled me to play bigger tournaments against the best players in the world, and build a career of being a professional tennis player, which is what I’d always hoped for.”
That unprecedented leap from scraping by in Europe to lifting the Australian Open trophy still resonates 50 years later. And with Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner dominating at the top of the men’s game and fellow Aussie Alex de Minaur striving to reach their level, it’s likely that Mark Edmondson will remain the last Australian man to win his home Slam for years to come.
