2017 Australian Open
The 2017 Australian Open was a tennis tournament that took place at Melbourne Park between 16 and 29 January 2017. It was the 105th edition of the Australian Open, and the first Grand Slam tournament of the year. The tournament consisted of events for professional players in singles, doubles and mixed doubles play. Junior and wheelchair players competed in singles and doubles tournaments. As in previous years, the tournament's title sponsor was Kia. Novak Djokovic and Angelique Kerber were the defending champions and both were unsuccessful in their title defence; they lost to Denis Istomin and  Coco Vandeweghe in the second and fourth rounds, respectively. For the first time since the 2004 French Open, both No. 1 seeds lost before the quarterfinals, with both Andy Murray and Kerber defeated in the fourth round. Roger Federer won his eighteenth men's singles Grand Slam title by defeating Rafael Nadal in a five-set final. It was his first major title since 2012 Wimbledon and a rematch of the 2009 Australian Open final, which Nadal won in five sets. Serena Williams overcame her sister Venus in the women's singles final, surpassing Steffi Graf to become the player  with the most major wins in the women's game in the Open Era. Tournament. The 2017 Australian Open was the 105th edition of the tournament and was held at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament was run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is part of the 2017 ATP World Tour and the 2017 WTA Tour calendars under the Grand Slam category. The tournament consisted of both men's and women's singles and doubles draw as well as a mixed doubles event. There were singles and doubles events for both boys and girls (players under 18 ), which are part of the Grade A category of tournaments, and also singles, doubles, and quad events for men's and women's wheelchair tennis players as part of the NEC tour under the Grand Slam category. The tournament was played on hard courts and took place over a series of 25 courts, including the three main show courts: Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena and Margaret Court Arena. Broadcast. In Australia, selected key matches were broadcast live by the Seven Network. The majority of matches was shown on the network's primary channel Channel Seven; however, during news programming nationwide  and most night matches in Perth, coverage shifted to either 7Two or 7mate. Additionally, every match was also available to be streamed live through a free 7Tennis mobile app. Internationally, Eurosport held the rights for Europe, broadcasting matches on Eurosport 1, Eurosport 2 and the Eurosport Player. This was a rematch of the 2009 Australian Open final, which Rafael Nadal won to become the first (and to date, only) Spaniard to win the Australian Open title. The final saw the two holding service for six games of the first set, whilst during the seventh game was the pivotal break of  serve giving Federer the opening set. Nadal quickly broke Federer's serve in the second set racing out to a lead that Federer could not overcome, giving him the second set and leveling the match at one set apiece. The third set was a rather lopsided affair seeing Nadal secure his service game only in the fourth game of the set. The fourth set started off competitively with the two holdings serve until Nadal broke in the fourth game of the set, a lead he would never surrender, evening the match at two sets apiece. The decisive fifth set commenced  with a break of Federer's serve by Nadal, giving him a lead in the early going; however, Nadal's serve got broken during the sixth game of the set, leveling the match at two sets and three games apiece. Federer won the next three games breaking Nadal's service in the eighth game of the set to allow him to successfully serve out the match in the final ninth game. This was Roger Federer's 18th Grand Slam singles title, the most ever by a man in the history of tennis, and it was his fifth Australian Open title , just one shy of the record co-held by Novak Djokovic and Roy Emerson. Federer would go on to equal this record by defending his title successfully the next year. This was a rematch of the 2003 Australian Open final, where Serena Williams completed the first "Serena Slam" and her career Grand Slam, whilst Serena won five more Australian Open titles in the interim and her sister Venus had no other final appearances at the event. They each broke the others' serve twice to start the match with Venus finally holding serve in the fifth service game and her sister  Serena holding her own serve in the subsequent game. The seventh game was the pivotal break of service that Serena Williams got on her sister Venus' serve, costing her the set just a mere three games later. During the second set, the two traded held service games for the first six games to start the set, whilst Venus started serving first. She would get broken again during the seventh game of the set, which eventually surrendered the match to sister Serena. This was Serena Williams' 23 Grand Slam singles title and seventh Australian Open title for her career, both being  Open era records, whilst being one shy of Margaret Court's record of 24 in the history of tennis. Singles seeds. The following are the seeded players and notable players who withdrew from the event. Seeding are arranged according to ATP and WTA rankings on 9 January 2017, while ranking and "points before" are as of 16 January 2017. The rankings afterwards comes from 30 January 2017. Women's singles. The following players would have been seeded, but they withdrew from the event. Main draw qualifier entries. The qualifying competition took place in Melbourne Park on 11 – 14 January 2017 . Protected ranking. The following players were accepted directly into the main draw using a protected ranking: Withdrawals. The following players were accepted directly into the main tournament, but withdrew with injuries and other reasons. Point and prize money distribution. Point distribution. Below is a series of tables for each of the competitions showing the ranking points offered for each event. Prize money. The Australian Open total prize money for 2017 was increased by 14% to a tournament record A$50,000,000. Qualifiers prize money was also the Round of 128 prize money. <nowiki>*</nowiki>per team External links. 2017 Australian