Sport in the 1960s Australia excelled in international sport throughout most of the 1960s, and local participation rates were high. Tennis and football turned professional, and television changed the way Australians watched sport. Women asserted their right to compete in previously male-dominated sports, although they still struggled to achieve true sporting equality.Towards the end of the decade, however, some people believed that Australia's sporting performances had suffered a decline. Many experts feared that Australia would soon be overtaken by the professional, structured sporting systems being established in other countries.
Tennis in the 1960s Tennis players like Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Neale Fraser and Rod Laver ensured that Australia remained the dominant tennis nation of the 1960s. Throughout the decade, Australia won the Davis Cup seven times and took home the Wimbledon men's singles title eight times. Margaret Smith Court, one of Australia's most successful women's tennis players, emerged onto the international scene in 1960. Over the next 15 years, she would go on to win 62 singles and doubles Grand Slam titles.
Olympic Games during the 1960s Australia won 22 medals at the Rome Olympics in 1960. Compared with the 35-medal haul in Melbourne, some Australians were disappointed with this result. In 1964, Australia brought home 18 medals from the Tokyo Olympics and just 17 from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. By the end of the decade, experts claimed that Australia's international sporting dominance was waning. Many reasons were put forward to explain this decline. Australia's geographic isolation had always made international competition difficult and expensive and forced Australian athletes to compete during their off-season. The biggest problem, however, was that Australian sport remained relatively amateur and unstructured compared with the rigorous, professional sporting systems that were emerging in Europe and America. In the 1960s, it was becoming clear that talent was no longer enough - if it were to retain its international sporting dominance, Australia would require a government-funded national sports system. The full realisation of this would be seen in the coming decade.