Trophies - Australian Open Champions
Each year the best in international tennis
take to the courts of Melbourne
to contest the first Grand Slam event of the calendar year. They not only fight for the prize money, but at the
end of the day, the trophies. Australian
Open champions of the singles events are rewarded with the Norman
Brookes trophy for men,
and the Daphne Akhurst trophy
for women.
Norman Brookes
President of the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia for over 28 years, and celebrated Grand Slam winner of the early 1900s, Sir Norman Everard Brookes, was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977.
The ultimate men's singles champion, Brookes won both the Australian Championship (as the Australian Open was known in the early days) and Wimbledon in the years prior to World War 1. He became the Australian Open champion in 1911 and captured the doubles title in 1924. Post war, he became US doubles champion in 1919 and Australian doubles winner in 1924.
His greatest successes were at Wimbledon:
- He became the first player from abroad to lift the men's singles trophy in 1907
- He was the first left-handed player ever to claim the coveted grass court title
- In the same year he and partner Anthony Wilding claimed the men's doubles title
- He successfully contested the 1914 men's singles final against New Zealander, Wilding. Sadly Wilding had played his last competitive match, as he was killed by shellfire in Belgium during the Great War.
- Brookes again completed his clean sweep by taking the 1914 men's doubles title.
In 1939 he was knighted in recognition of his outstanding service to the game of tennis.
Daphne Akhurst Cozens
Australian tennis was robbed of an outstanding tennis talent when Daphne Jessie Akhurst Cozens died prematurely of an ectopic pregnancy at the age of 29.
Born in 1903, this Australian Open champion, took the world by storm with her incredible run of both singles and doubles titles from 1925 to 1930 – two years before her untimely death.
The Australian Open champion of the women's singles title is, each year, awarded the Daphne Akhurst Trophy in honour of the legendary young woman.
She is a true champion having won the singles title no fewer than 5 times, and to top it all, she took the women's doubles title a magical 5 times too!
Akhurst's achievements:
- She won the women's singles title in 1925, 1926 and 1928 to 1930
- She ranks third, to Margaret Court and Nancy Wynne Bolton, on the list of the most women's singles titles
- Together with Sylvia Lance Harper she won the doubles in 1924 and 1925. Esna Boyd Robertson was her successful partner in 1928 and in 1929 and 1931 she lifted the doubles title with partner Louise Bickerton
- She went on to win the mixed doubles a total of 4 times with partners John Willard, Jean Borotra and Gar Moon
Who will win this year's trophies to become the next Australian Open tennis champions? For all your tennis betting we recommend William Hill, one of the world's leading bookmakers.
