Mark Edmondson
Mark Edmondson is a retired Australian professional tennis player.
Edmondson entered the 1976 Australian Open ranked 212th in the world. After beating top seed Ken Rosewall in the semi finals, Edmondson beat defending champion John Newcombe in the final in four sets on a day when the wind was so severe that the players left the court for half an hour at the peak of the windstorm. When the storm arrived the temperature dropped from 104 degrees to 79 degrees in five minutes and prior to the storm, 130 spectators had been treated for heat exhaustion. Edmondson mastered the conditions better than Newcombe and served particularly well. He remains the lowest-ranked winner of a Grand Slam tournament since the ATP rankings were introduced in 1973. He is the last Australian to date to win the men's singles at the Australian Open.
Edmondson's best subsequent performance in Grand Slams was reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open in 1981 and Wimbledon in 1982. At Wimbledon 1982 he beat Vitas Gerulaitis in the quarter finals before losing in straight sets to Jimmy Connors in the semis. This took him to a career-high singles ranking of #15. As a doubles player, he won 34 titles, including five in Grand Slams.