The origins of the South Australian Championships is thought to be traced back to 1880,[2] however other sources give the start date as 1890 [3][4] when the Adelaide-based South Australian Tennis Championships, the first known recorded winner of the event was Herbert Hambridge [5] running as part of the men's amateur tour until 1967.
In 1920 the men's South Australian Championships in Adelaide carried the Australasian title in March and was won by Pat O'Hara Wood.
The tournament had a chaotic history over the following years, taking place on the professional tour again in 1974, in 1977, as the Marlboro-sponsored South Australian Men's Tennis Classic,[8] and in 1979, as the South Australian Open,[9] before it started a regular run in 1981 under the latter title.
After the surface change of the Australian Open, the tournament also switched to hard courts, starting with the 1988 edition when the event was concurrently called the Australian Hard Court Championships however this national championship had been staged in rotation at various cities around Australia since 1938.
The roll of honor for both of these events are different and as such are treated as two different tournaments, with the exception of these years when they were combined titles.