Australia’s Ten Greatest Tennis Players

Tennis has long been one of Australia’s favourite pastimes, and while our success in the sport may have peaked during the dominant ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, it’s still a hugely popular sport today. The die-hards keep an eye on the tours throughout the year, but there are plenty of others who, even if they don’t fit into that category, keep a keen eye on the Grand Slams, in particular the Australian Open. And even for sports lovers for whom tennis doesn’t necessarily sit at the top of their list of preferred sports, punting on it is a common way to get involved, with the prevalence of quality betting apps making doing so easier than ever.   

As such a popular sport in the country, it’s no surprise that there has been no shortage of brilliant tennis players to come out of Australia over the years, from the dominant forces who helped the professional arm of the sport transition into the more lucrative Open era like Rod Laver and Margaret Court, to the unrelenting Ash Barty of the modern day. Below, we take a look at ten of the greatest Australian tennis players of all time.

Margaret Court

Margaret Court is the most successful tennis player in history in terms of Grand Slam titles won, having accumulated an enormous 24 such titles, the last 11 of which came during the Open Era. She dominated in an era vastly different from today’s; where things like live streaming make modern-day tennis so much more visible, when Court was winning Grand Slams like she was shelling peas tennis was a far less ubiquitious sport. Nonetheless, her fame even today, six decades after her reign began, is undoubtable, and one of the main stadiums at the Australian Open, Margaret Court Arena, is now named in her honour.

Rod Laver

Speaking of players with Australian Open stadiums named in their honour, Rod Laver is the only player in the history of tennis to win the ‘Calendar Slam’ on multiple occasions, and sits comfortably among the sport’s greatest ever players. He achieved this feat, which entails winning all four Grand Slams in a calendar year, in both 1962 and 1969, accumulating eight of his 11 total Slam wins during these seasons. The man affectionately known as Rocket was successful all around the world, and by the end of his career had accumulated what remains a record 198 singles titles.

Roy Emerson

The 1960s and early ‘70s were a dominant period for Australian tennis, with Roy Emerson joining Laver, John Newcombe and Ken Rosewall – both of whom we’ll get to later – to win far more than their fair share of Grand Slam titles during that time. Emerson accounted for 12 of those, all of them within the space of a little over six years between 1961 and 1967. He demonstrated a particular affinity for the Australian Open, winning it five times in a row and six times in total during his seven seasons at the top.

Ken Rosewall

Rosewall started his career earlier than the above names, winning his first Grand Slam at the beginning of 1953, but his incredible longevity meant that he was still going at the beginning of the 1970s. He won his first four by the end of 1956 which was followed by a 12-year period in which he didn’t win another, though he won plenty of Pro Slams in the meantime. In 1968 he won his first Grand Slam of the Open Era, and went on to win another three more up until 1972. Rosewall also won 24 major men’s doubles titles, helping to establish himself as one of the most successful tennis players of all time.

John Newcombe

John Newcombe is the final member of the golden era of men’s tennis in Australia, contributing seven of his own Grand Slam singles titles to the enormous collection of major trophies accumulated by Australians during that time. He won all but two of his Grand Slams during the Open Era, with his first coming in 1967 and his last in 1972. He also won a huge 17 major titles in doubles tournaments, a figure which was formerly a record.

Evonne Goolagong Cawley

One of the most beloved figures in Australian sporting history, Evonne Goolagong Cawley won her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros at the age of just 19, the same year that she won her first doubles title; that coming at the Australian Open alongside Margaret Court. By the end of her glittering career, Goolagong had accumulated seven Grand Slam singles titles – four of which came at the Australian Open – as well as six in women’s doubles and one in mixed doubles.

Pat Rafter

To the modern era now, and the first Australian to win multiple Grand Slam singles titles in over two decades. He accomplished that feat by winning back-to-back US Open titles in 1997 and 1998, and though those would be the only two major singles titles that he would win, he still enjoyed a successful career thereafter. Rafter was for a time ranked the world’s number one player, something he achieved in 1999, and following his two US Open wins would go on to go agonisingly close to a Wimbledon title multiple times, making a semi-final and then two consecutive finals between 1999 and 2001.

Lleyton Hewitt

The man Rafter passed the baton to as Australia’s best tennis player was Lleyton Hewitt, a prodigious talent from Adelaide who looked for a time likely to dominate world tennis for an extended period. Hewitt won the US Open in 2001 at the age of just 20 and was the number one ranked player in the world later that year, before going on to win Wimbledon in 2002. Unfortunately, that winning trend didn’t continue and injuries ultimately hampered his career from his mid-20s onwards, but nonetheless he finished his career as a multiple Grand Slam winner and winner of a total of 30 singles titles.

Ash Barty

Ash Barty is Australia’s most recent superstar and the most successful Australian tennis player since the 1970s, winning three Grand Slam titles between 2019 and 2022. That most recent win came at the Australian Open earlier this year, after which she announced her retirement at the tender age of just 25. Undoubtedly Barty leaves the sport with plenty left in the tank, but nonetheless she deserves to be counted among the nation’s greatest ever players.

Australian tennis was, for a long time, the envy of the world, with a plethora of superstar players produced throughout the 1960s and ‘70s. While that hasn’t necessarily continued in the more competitive modern era, Australia is still viewed as a competitive nation in the tennis world, and the above ten players have all contributed significantly to that fact.