MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 The million-dollar 1 Point Slam is returning to the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of 2027.<\/p>\n
Australian Open organizers announced Wednesday that the crowd favorite from last January would again be offering a top prize of a million Australian dollars ($705,000 at current exchange rates) when it is held next year before the Jan. 17-31 main draw at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
Jordan Smith, a little-known local amateur player beat Jannik Sinner and went on to make himself a millionaire in Australian dollars after winning the 1 Point Slam. The Australian won on the third stroke of the final when Joanna Garland, the women\u2019s No. 117 from Taiwan, sent a two-handed backhand wide.<\/p>\n
All the matches lasted just one single point in a knockout bracket that included men and women, professionals and amateurs, plus celebrities such as Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou, who was knocked out without hitting a ball after an ace from Petar Jovic.<\/p>\n
The event also included Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Alexander Zverev and Naomi Osaka.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy journey started at a qualifying event at Sydney Olympic Park \u2014 I never expected it would lead to me stepping onto Rod Laver Arena and competing against world-class players, let alone walking away as the winner. It completely changed my life,\u201d Smith said in an Australian Open statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year we\u2019ll be hosting an event at our own club and hopefully inspiring more players to give it a go, just like I did. You never know where it might take you,\u201d Smith added. <\/p>\n
From next week, affiliated clubs, associations, coaches and partner schools across Australia can register their interest to host a 1 Point Slam qualifying event in the leadup to the Melbourne Park final.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 The million-dollar 1 Point Slam is returning to the first Grand Slam tennis tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-846460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}