New Year, New Balls, New Faces…
It’s Aus Open Time!
It’s January and the time has come again for Melbourne Park to roll out the welcome mat. The players will try out their new outfits and tug at their pants. They’ll put a year behind them and toss their soiled towels at innocent ball kids. They’ll debate line calls and rediscover the pain of post-match press conferences. And if you’re Coco Vanderweghe, you’ll lament the lack of bananas on court.
Tennis is back in season.
Given the stress on their bodies over the nearly 11-month playing calendar, the Christmas break seems quite a short one. Before the new year had even begun, we were back in Perth for the Hopman Cup and it was all go-go-go from there.
With a host of high-profile absentees, Australian Open organisers must have been wondering if they should have given the players a bit more rest. Like an over-earnest party planner, Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley booked the photographer, paid for the drinks and laid out the buffet as he always does. And then Serena said she wasn’t coming, and neither was Andy. Then Nadal, Djokovic, Wawrinka, Muguruza and Johanna Konta all arrived to a media summoning clouds over injury concerns.
Craig must have looked at this grim bunch and thought, ‘Look at all those worried faces … except for Roger. He looks great.’ The obvious solution? Get more quokkas. Indeed Roger does look better than ever. Thirty-six and nineteen slams later, and he’s still the life of the party. It must make the rest of the tour sick.
But to be downhearted about the prospects of the world’s biggest stars surviving two weeks is to ignore a change in the mindset of the tour elite. With Roger skipping last year’s entire claycourt season, he gave the injury-addled a blueprint for managing the rigours of the year. Now Novak has come to Melbourne after an extended lay-off for an elbow complaint, and Nadal cut short his season in 2017 to manage his knee to be ready for the year’s first major. Expect both to be fit and through to the second week without much trouble. For the ATP tour this should mean a more diverse talent pool to share the titles on circuit.
For the women, the collective of 128 contesting this year’s event breathed a sigh of relief as Williams opted out. But she is so very close to returning, so the Australian Open looks like an invaluable opportunity while the cup is unguarded. Look at the winners of the last three Grand Slams and you’ll see that rankings count for sweet bugger all. At the time of writing, last year’s shock US Open champ Sloane Stephens has already been knocked out and Garbine Muguruza has cramping issues, so it’s a good chance we’ll be seeing another new champion this year. That is, unless Angelique Kerber doesn’t add to her 2016 title. She should be the odds on favourite given her form after a disappointing 2017.
Down under no longer?
To focus solely on the statistical favourites at Melbourne Park over the next fortnight would be to discredit the major theme brewing this summer.
As Australians, rarely have we anticipated a tournament with a sense of not just wishful but genuine optimism for our local contingent. It might be too soon to say it’s a new dawn, but it won’t stop Channel 7 claiming it for an extra few million viewers. Just as the media marvelled at the Socceroos miraculously not being drawn in the ‘group of death’ for the 2018 World Cup draw as if a win was now vaguely imaginable, what hasn’t occurred for 42 years is being touted as a realistic possibility: an Australian winning an Australian Open.
We have mulled over the draw and some have all but labelled Nick Kyrgios a certain starter in the semis already. It’s not quite the same hype surrounding Ash Barty, but considering the dearth of stars at the top of the women’s game her claim is arguably stronger. As a Richmond diehard, the Barty Party might hope that the shock 2017 US Open triumph of Sloane Stephens opens doors like the Western Bulldogs did for the Tigers. The tougher reality is that a slam is more than probably too soon for either of them, and 2018 looks to be a challenging year as both of these top-20 debutants begin to defend the points earned last year.
It’s hard to gauge too much from Kyrgios’ demolition job in the first round here other than he is in very good form while his second round match displayed a few of his trademark niggles. Whereas, Barty’s first-round performance against the power-hitting 18-year-old Aryna Sabalenka showed a newfound maturity.
What Kyrgios’ “composure” in a distracted second round match on Hisense Arena showed was that he looks to have added some polish to his image. It’s anyone’s guess whether it will last, but it’s a maturity we waited for and never got from Bernard Tomic. If he keeps it up, he’ll soon discover that even if he doesn’t love the sport, he can at least make it easier to enjoy when the media and fans are on-side.
It’s these developments that have enhanced 2017 as a year of learning, which can only mean that 2018 is a year of moving. And it is better for Kyrgios this year that the support and criticism behind Australian tennis is being directed not just at him but across a host of budding talents.
After a few years of headlines and disillusionment with the commitment of our young men and Sam Stosur’s unfulfilled potential on home soil, Australian tennis looks to have rebooted with the infectious energy of Daria Gavrilova, the career-best form of Matthew Ebden and the rise of Alex de Minaur, who despite falling to Tomas Berdych has seized the spotlight with six top-50 wins and an ATP final in the last three weeks. The resemblance to a young Lleyton Hewitt is uncanny, but let’s not put the mozz on him.
The year ahead
However tempting it might be to assume from our sports media coverage that the rest of the world don’t also have young tennis players who are quite good, the lessons learnt over 2017 are not limited to our own. The likes of Angelique Kerber, Jelena Ostapenko, Elina Svitolina and even Belinda Bencic, despite her second-round loss, have been looking to fill the void and will feature strongly again in 2018 and come in with solid form. They have realised that simply waiting for Serena to retire is a mindset that breeds complacency and can’t succeed.
Ditto on the men’s side. God knows why, but it seems to have taken a while for the tour to discover that Roger and Rafa are not slowing down and still need to be caught. Surely they’ve taken the hint by now, and 2018 looks to be a volatile year as the top of the table becomes more congested. Grigor Dimitrov missed the biggest opportunity to unseat the Fedal duopoly last year at this very event, which may have set the tone for a year delivering a very different landscape to what we see now, one that is still revelling in a return to the good old days. Dimitrov has been knocking on the door for a long time now, and has arguably under-delivered on his promise. It only gets tougher though. Novak is back and fit, as is fan favourite Juan Martin del Potro; they loom as the biggest challenges to the status quo this year. For now Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios still seek consistency on the biggest stage, but they aren’t far behind.
Last year was a bittersweet Open. Australian tennis was at the crossroads, but Federer was back on top. Tennis in Australia had gone backwards.
In the last six months, however, someone has been sitting on the fast-forward button.
This will inevitably slow as the circus moves off-shore in a matter of days, and it pays to be a bit bullish about dealing out praise before its due. It’s true that, all bar our top-ranked man and woman, most of our players seem to have spent their tickets a little early this year.
But for now everyone is in a great mood and that’s the best kind of contagion.
