The Australian Open is an annual tennis tournament created in 1905 and played on outdoor hard courts at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The men's singles was one of the two first events contested in 1905 along with the men's doubles competition. The Australian Open is played during two weeks mid-January, and has been chronologically the first of the four Grand Slam tournaments of the tennis season since 1987. The event was not held from 1916 to 1918 because of World War I, from 1940 to 1945 because of World War II and 1986 because Tennis Australia wanted to move the tournament start from mid-December 1986 to mid-January 1987.