14 January 2026 | Tennis West

Steve Yarwood almost didn’t make the AO 1 Point Slam WA qualifying tournament.

It was the morning of the local one-point playoff at Cottesloe, and the day already felt busy enough. Work, family, Christmas looming. He’d been reminded late that entries were closing, tossed it around in his head, and still wasn’t sure as he headed out the door. In the end, he grabbed a friend and drove down anyway.

Six Rock Paper Scissors wins later, he was through.

“Don’t change the rules on me at last minute,” he laughed of the AO 1 Point Slam in Melbourne on 14 January. For Yarwood, Rock Paper Scissors isn’t luck. It’s a skill that he has honed.

Four or five years ago, he won a Rock Paper Scissors competition at the Rosemont Hotel in North Perth and made the semifinals. There’s a rhythm to it, he says, a psychology, a pattern. In WA, it became his unlikely edge. Six toss-ups. Six wins. Six serves.

And none of them came back.

“I’ve hit basically six first serves with new balls on grass courts that haven’t come back.”

Yarwood, 38, is the oldest of the state and territory champions to earn a place through the qualifying pathway. His local club is Scarborough, a tight-knit beachside community in Perth’s north, but he’s representing Cottesloe Tennis Club, which hosted the playoff and will receive a $5,000 grant as a result of his run.

Tennis didn’t come early to Yarwood. He didn’t pick up a racquet until he was 13, a late starter at North Beach Tennis Club.

“I got obsessed and played six, seven times a week. Basically from 13 until about 17, 18. And then I got a little distracted after that and discovered cars and all the other stuff after you leave school.”

The obsession was strong enough that he began beating some of the best juniors in the state. Strong enough to briefly wonder if there might be more to chase. Then came a reality check. In his first proper tournament, he ran into a young Matthew Ebden and lost 6–0, 6–0.

“He was just light years ahead of everyone,” Yarwood recalls.

That match told him what he needed to know. Yarwood stepped back, built a life, and kept tennis as a constant rather than a gamble.

He returned to Scarborough at 21 and has been playing there ever since. Seventeen years on, tennis still threads through everything he does. His business, a short-term rental management company called Let Go, now sponsors the club. His weeks are divided between work, the court, and time with his two children – Leo, five, and Sienna, eight.

The sport also runs deep in his family. His father played tennis “not to any great level,” but his grandfather, Bill Yarwood, reached a high standard despite losing an arm in a truck accident. His mother, Italian and not a sportsperson herself, was the one driving her son to tournaments and competitions.

As a kid, he also got a glimpse of the biggest stages early. At 10, he was a ballkid at the Hopman Cup in 2001 to his idol Lleyton Hewitt and Roger Federer.

Now, two decades later, he finds himself circling back toward those arenas in a very different way.

Yarwood’s serve is still his weapon – around 200 km/h, with shape and disguise. If he gets the choice, he’ll serve.

“In Melbourne, there’s the chance that if I’m serving again, that someone will just want to stand further back, but it could also open them up to a little cheeky underarm serve,” he laughs.

Off court, he admires Novak Djokovic. “I saw a bit of myself in him. Because I started tennis later, I didn’t have the entourage that some of the other players had. Novak says what he thinks and he doesn’t filter things too much.”

Yarwood also respects Djokovic’s advocacy for players outside the elite.

“I think he’s done a lot for tennis. He’s helped with the disparity between the top ranked players and the lower ranked players. You really have to be at the top 100, 200 to make a living from tennis.”

Asked whether nerves will creep in when he contests the AO 1 Point Slam, Yarwood responds with characteristic levity.

“So far, so good. I’ve had a Christmas party on before the last one, so maybe it was a bit of a small hangover that helped me loosen up a little bit. Maybe that’s part of the key to it.”

He’ll be in Melbourne for two weeks during the AO, competing, watching and visiting family. His father was born there, and his 90-year-old grandmother still plays golf in the eastern suburbs. He’s attended the Australian Open for the past five years as a fan, this time, the perspective will be different.

Rock. Paper. Serve.

Steve Yarwood knows that in one point, anything can happen. And that, more than anything, is what keeps him walking onto the court.

See the final of the AO 1 Point Slam tonight from 4.30 pm on 9Now or watch the replay from 7.30 pm on Channel 9.