This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
When the Australasian Championships began in 1905, women were not permitted to enter. The men's singles title that first year went to Rodney Heath, and it was not until 1922, seventeen years later, that a women's championship was added to the event. The tournament's early name reflected its shared regional character: through the 1920s, entrants came from both Australia and New Zealand, and the championship rotated between the two countries' cities as much as it did between Australian states.
The tournament dropped Australasian for Australian in 1927, a naming change that outlasted the shared regional entry pool by decades; New Zealand interest and entries gradually declined through the twentieth century even as the name no longer described a joint championship. A second, larger change arrived in 1969, when the Australian Open adopted its current name and, along with the year's other three majors, opened its draw to professional players for the first time, ending the amateur only era that had defined the championship since 1905.
The Australian Open's distance from Europe and North America has shaped its history in ways the other three majors did not share: through much of the twentieth century, the tournament struggled to attract the world's top players away from the European season, a problem that eased only after the move to Melbourne Park and the tournament's rise to genuine parity with Wimbledon, the French Open and the US Open as a full commercial and sporting major.