Australian Open || We Begin
Edition #213
WAIT:
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And we’re off! The first tennis grand slam of 2025 begins today, and there’s a lot to talk about.
If you don’t know Andy Murray has partnered up with Novak Djokovic, something extremely important as his age continues to rise. How long will he keep it up. Let me just give you a couple of quotes from Murray.
“At times it’s very enjoyable,” Murray says. “But high performance is not supposed to be like laughs and jokes and messing around. It isn’t about that. In all the times I’ve been on tour, I haven’t seen that from any of the best players in the world. I’ve seen it from some of the lower ranked players, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re not there.
“The best players take it seriously and they want to improve, and it’s not always easy. It’s demanding, but it’s extremely rewarding when you make a breakthrough in a practice and something starts to feel a little bit better. That’s exciting.
“Obviously I expect when the matches start, the tournament starts, it is stressful. When you’re trying to achieve great things, it’s not easy. But the rewards at the end of it can be great. And that’s something that I’m looking forward to.”
“So I was actually playing golf, and we’d actually been exchanging messages,” Murray says. “Novak had messaged me, just wanting to chat. It was just before Shanghai, and we’d exchanged messages and missed calls and stuff. Then eventually, I was on the 17th hole of the golf course, and the guy I was playing with said to me, ‘Do you know what’s next?’. I was like, ‘No, not really’.
“He said ‘Do you have any plans to do any coaching?’ And I said, ‘Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse to do right now’. And then 30 minutes later, I was in the car and I called Novak, and then we had a conversation, and he asked if I would be interested in helping, which I obviously wasn’t expecting. I said to him, ‘Look, I need to think about it and talk to my family.’
“So I spoke to them, and after a couple of days, I thought that it was a pretty unique opportunity and experience. And I thought it would be a good idea to try it together, and spend some time in the off-season through Australia and see how it goes for both of us, because it’s a little bit different. It’s not the usual kind of set-up. So it made sense to trial it and see if it works. And then we said we’d make a more definitive decision after the tournament.”
“Because of the situation and how unusual it is, a lot of the talk is about my relationship with Novak,” Murray says. “There’s a big team of people around him that are helping him, trying to get him in shape and prepared and motivated to win. They have just as an important role, as I do in that.
“They’ve all done brilliant work, and have worked with him for an unbelievably long time. The last thing I want to do is come in and try and change everything and say ‘You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that wrong’.
“It’s about making small changes to things and trying to help him and improve with the whole team.”
And just a little quip here, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic are in the same draw, so imagine if they face each other for their “draw champion”. Pretty cool, huh? And also a good way to make sure only one (Alcaraz or Djokovic), actually has a path to the finals.
DRAWS:
CREDIT1
Right away, I saw a lot of interesting matchups in each one. There are going to be a lot of fun ones (Nick Kyrgios), but also there are going to be a lot of tight ones. Quarter 2 is looking to be the most intense, as Fritz and Medvedev both have an equal chance to make it past. Quarter 4 might be an okay one, with Alexander Zverev being the guy who I think has the best chance to win. If I had a second option, it would be Casper Ruud. I think this guy has the potential to advance.
Now Carlos Alcaraz has a chance to break a record that Rafael Nadal set, trying to become the youngest to achieve a career grand slam at 21. Rafa did it at 24 years old. As long as nothing huge happens to him, Carlos has 3 attempts to break this. Before the career grand slam chase, Alcaraz became the youngest to win a grand slam on all surfaces.
If there’s one reason to bet on Djokovic to beat Alcaraz? It would be that Alcaraz has experienced the least success in the Australian Open. Alcaraz might even have to play Jack Draper, of Great Britain this year, if both advance far enough, and that’ll be a crazy matchup.
Going from the men’s side to the women’s side, there are a lot of storylines here as well.
We all know who the king and queen of clay are. Rafael Nadal is the king. Iga Swiatek is the queen. If someone refutes this, I will go ballistic. This doesn’t mean she sucks at the hard courts, but she definitely underperformed at the Australian and US Open. She did so badly that Aryna Sabalenka took her position as World #1.
More than this, we all know that she was suspended for one month for a doping violation, which basically clouded her 2024. But, it also brought more than a tarnished year, but a new coach named Wim Fissette.
Alcaraz isn't the only one with a problem at the Australia Open. Swiatek has it too. She was eliminated in the fourth and third rounds in the last two years.
What is good for Swiatek, though, is the fact that she doesn’t have many hard matchups in her draw. Coco Gauff has landed on the same side as Sabalenka, as well as Qinwen Zheng and Jessica Pegula, meaning that she has a huge pathway. The question is, will she follow it?
Finally, Aryna Sabalenka isn’t just the world #1 who wants to distance herself. She also has something else in mind. A 3-peat. If anyone’s the queen of hard-court tennis now, it’s got to be here. She’s only lost one match in both the Australian Open and the US Open combined in the last 2 years.
Now, a 3-peat at the Australian Open hasn’t happened since Martina Hingis won three in a row between 1997 and 1999. If there is one person who stands in her way from this title, though, it has to be Coco Guaff, who had a strong end to 2024 and is looking to continue that in 2025.
Below is my prediction in the New Year’s article. I’m still going to hope that Swiatek makes the final because she really doesn’t have a huge threat.
Australian Open:
Djokovic vs Sinner. Djokovic wins.
Swiatek vs Sabalenka. Sabalenka wins.
That’s it for me guys. Be sure to leave your predictions in the comments, and like this post!