In 1976, the Australian Mark Edmondson, nicknamed Edo, won the Melbourne Slam: no other compatriot has achieved it since then. That tournament was snubbed by many big names, but not by the home ones. Thus “the janitor”, the cleaner, beat both Rosewall and Newcombe. And he became immortal
If anyone had bet on Mark Edmondson before the tournament they would have become rich. But there wasn’t even a bettor who imagined him winning at the 1976 Australian Open. Fifty years later, Edo no longer has hair but he has the same handlebar mustache as then, only now they’re all white. He showed up in Melbourne for the first few days of the tournament, let them celebrate it a bit – no Australian has won their home Slam since – and then hurriedly returned to the beach villa he bought with the earnings of his honest tennis career. A career totally revolutionized in those two incredible weeks, the craziest of his life.
