John Newcombe dropped to the ground and put a towel over his head to protect himself from the howling wind. The referee didn’t wait until the end of the game, he’d had enough and called the players off the court.
Mark Edmondson winning the Australian Open has been the annual footnote to stories about the Open ever since that day in 1976 because he remains the last local male to have won the tournament. What is less remembered is the extraordinary match that unfolded against Newcombe.
Mark Edmondson with the spoils of victory after his remarkable win in the men’s singles at the 1976 Australian Open.Credit: The Age
It was described by Peter Stone in The Age as the greatest upset for years in world tennis. It was also one of the more extraordinary days in tennis.
Australia was guaranteed a local would win the tournament that day. Mark Edmondson an unknown 21-year-old from Gosford in New South Wales was playing one of the biggest figures in the game in the world – Newcombe. No unseeded player had ever won the tournament since it began in 1905.
The trophy juggle becomes too much for the victorious Edmondson.
“Newk” had already won Wimbledon three times and the US Open twice. Given his global standing in the sport, he was an almost unbackable favourite, partly because sports betting was still something that happened in pubs and back lanes not assailed on TV.
But Edmondson had also beaten 40-year-old Ken “Muscles” Rosewall, the No.1 seed, on the genteel courts in the Kooyong valley in the semi-final.
After Newcombe won his semi-final, he was interviewed and asked how he felt about playing the little known Edmondson in the final.
“It’s not how I feel, it’s how he feels. He beat Muscles today, but he has to play John Newcombe tomorrow,” Newcombe said, in what might also have been the first cringeworthy moment of third-person sport speak in Australia. Sitting in the locker room listening to the interview Edmondson was nonplussed.
“I thought that’s a bit cocky,” Edmondson recalled.
The final was played on a quintessential Melbourne summer’s day; oppressively hot. It had been 36 degrees on the Saturday, and by the time the players walked on court for the final of the 1976 Marlboro Australian Open – yes, you read the naming rights correctly – on the Sunday afternoon it was 42 degrees.
“Then a southerly buster came through after about an hour and a half, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in 20 minutes,” Edmondson recalled this week.
The wind was howling. It was a wind that could lift a scab off your knee. Umpires’ chairs tumbled across the court, paper bags eddied around the small stadium.
Newcombe – the “Bewdy Newk” charismatic star with a Dennis Lillee moustache and twinkle in his eye – hammed up the chaotic drama, hitting the grass mid-match laying flat on his belly and covering his head to protect himself from the wind.
With gusts up to 72km/h, the players were told to get off court as play was suspended mid-game for half an hour.
Mark Edmondson in action at the 1976 Australian Open, including (right) hitting the winning volley in the final against John Newcombe.Credit: The Age
“I had played in Tassie the month before, and it was so windy there, the females serving from one end could not get the ball over the net the wind was so strong. And they didn’t suspend the matches there, and it was much windier than at Kooyong. But at Kooyong they decided to take us off the court,” Edmondson said.
“Newk laid down and was clowning around, and they suspended play. It was 15-30 on my serve [at 2-3 in the third set with the match one set apiece], and they didn’t even wait until the end of the game, they just sent us off, and it was a pretty tight point at the time. From memory, there was no warm-up again after [the players returned to court], you just had to come back out and serve at 15-30.
“I don’t think suspending the break helped whatsoever.
“We got to a tiebreak in that set, and it was 6-5 with Newk serving, and I managed to get a ball back to his backhand volley which wasn’t strong – his forehand volley was very strong – and the wind held it up just a bit, so he reached a bit and floated it long. That was all to do with the wind.
“Then he served at the other end with the wind at his back and he double faulted. That was pretty important.”
Unseeded, Edmondson was unknown to many players and fans, even though he was coming off a hot streak in Europe and Australia, where he’d won eight small tournaments ahead of the Open.
He reckons he would have been ranked in the top 20 players in Australia at the time, but the rankings only counted the first 15.
This wild-haired 21-year-old with his heavy moustache beat Peter Figel, the number one Austrian player at the time, in five sets in the first round. He then beat Phil Dent, the sixth seed, Brian Fairlie (13th seed) Dick Crealy (11th) Rosewall (1) and finally Newcombe (2). Figel was the only one to take him to five sets. His win was no fluke.
The Australian Open was the lesser of the four grand slams tournaments in those days, not yet elevated to the same status for prestige and prizemoney as Wimbledon, Roland Garros or the US Open. It had the tobacco company as its naming rights sponsor. KIA motors, the key sponsor now, wouldn’t start shipping cars to Australia until the following year.
The Age reported Edmondson won $8156. The Reserve Bank’s inflation calculator estimates that would be worth about $60,656 now. For context, those who play the first round of the Australian Open this year were guaranteed $132,000, while the overall winner will pocket $3.5 million.
It was a different time. So much of the day was dramatic, but it is now only remembered for the fact that no other Australian male has since won the title, which is what makes Mark Edmondson’s unlikely win in that stifling heat and whipping wind all the more remarkable.
“It was a great day,” Edmondson said.
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