THE speculation can now stop. The future of the Australian Open in Melbourne is secure until 2036.
With an exquisite piece of Australia Day timing, Victorian Premier John Brumby committed to a multi-million-dollar plan to keep the Open at Melbourne Park.
It is the most significant decision in the 104-year history of the championships.
The biggest tennis event in the southern hemisphere will stay where it belongs as Melbourne Park undergoes a dazzling revamp.
The Victorian Government has pledged $5million to develop a capital works program while the project itself is certain to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
By completion, Melbourne Park will again stand alongside its grand slam cousins as a world-class arena. Once the envy of its older counterparts, Melbourne Park has become a victim of its own popularity and versatility.
Wimbledon's protectors would sooner die than throw open its doors to rodeos, rock concerts or the Crusty Demons' motorbikes.
By design a multi-purpose venue, Melbourne Park has served the community well but successive regimes - Liberal and Labor - have watched it slowly decay.
Former premier John Cain will forever be hailed by the tennis community for his work to revive the Open when Kooyong had faded into grand slam redundancy. Mr Brumby was not prepared for Melbourne Park to suffer the same fate.
Neither was Tennis Australia.
And so, after three years of lobbying and negotiating, the best outcome has been achieved.
The Open will continue to be staged on the banks of the Yarra, one of the jewels in Melbourne's fabulous sporting precinct.
The tournament means too much to TA for it to be shunted either interstate or offshore.
And it is an economic colossus, as the Victorian Government well knows.
It was never going anywhere.
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