If this month’s Australian Open is anything to go by, 2024 promises to be a high-octane year.
The first Grand Slam of the season was completed. In men’s singles, Jannik Sinner recovered from two sets down to defeat Daniil Medvedev and win his first major title, and Aryna Sabalenka underlined her potential to become a dominant figure in women’s tennis after her straight-sets triumph over Zheng Qinwen.
Sinner stole the show as the latest member of the “next generation” to win a Grand Slam title, but other young talents set markers of their progress to the top of tennis. At the other end of the scale, there were some painful reminders of what happens when veterans reach their limits.
Here’s what we learned at the 2024 Australian Open.
The game I enjoyed the most.
Like most people, I had the top corner of the women’s draw pegged before the tournament. World number one Iga Swiatek had Sofia Kenin in the first round and would then face the winner of Danielle Collins and Angelique Kerber in the second round. There are three Grand Slam winners and one finalist in a small corner.
I thought Collins, a gritty free hitter who loved to compete and who had beaten Swiatek on Rod Laver Arena before, would give Swiatek a hell of a time, and she did. Collins was destroying Swiatek throughout the second set and the first half of the third and taking everyone along for the ride, as she so often does. He was up two breaks in the third. Swiatek said that in his mind he was already on his way to the airport.
And then… and then…
Isn’t that the history of tennis? A player who crumbles under pressure? An all-time great emerging from the canvas? Collins suddenly became shaky out of nowhere. Usually, she’s a pretty interesting client once she gets into a match. Not this time. His swing speed slowed and Swiatek, sensing his momentum, scored five straight games to win.
What I will never forget
I’ll stay with Collins for a moment. I ran into her after that game, and I mean right after that game. She is known for going directly from the court to the press room when she plays. Often, her sweat still drips on his forehead and her breathing is still labored while she speaks.
Aside from a tournament stenographer, we were alone in the room. She was upset but on her way to getting over it. We’ve known each other for a while. We share a love of surfing, yoga and introspection. We talk, she explains everything, which I appreciate. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia. Collins is a staunch adult.
He said losses, even one like this, don’t hurt as much because he was at the end of his career; This will probably be the last year of touring for her.
Danielle Collins plans to retire this season (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)
I didn’t understand what she was saying. She is only 30 years old and she has just pushed the world number one to the limit. She still has a lot of beautiful tennis in her.
He said he has other things he wants to do. Family is important and she wants to form one. The training, the travel, the loneliness of the road and the game wear her down and she’s not afraid to admit it.
“This is a hard life,” he said.
And another thing that will really stick in my memory: Sportswriters of a certain age used to tell me stories about seeing Major League Baseball legend Mickey Mantle stumbling around the outfield, his knees shattered, in his final season. He wasn’t pretty, they said.
Andy Murray was not so good in his first round loss to Tomás Martín Etcheverry. but he was slow, stiff, flat and emotionless and, well, nothing like Andy Murray, not even the metal Andy Murray versions of recent years.
He’s earned the right to play as long as he wants and go out on his own terms, but watching him struggle like this, unable to move, bend and do all those exciting Andy Murray things, is something I can’t stop watching. .
The player who surprised me in a good way.
I didn’t know much about Dino Prizmic, the 18-year-old Croatian qualifier with thighs like tree trunks, until he intimidated Novak Djokovic on Rod Laver Arena in the first round.
Prizmic gave Djokovic everything he had. The match lasted four hours. Djokovic had to dig deep and played the kind of desperate tennis you don’t normally see from him until the end of the second week. Prizmic was not afraid and hit the ball like Carlos Alcaraz.
I loved every second because I felt like I was watching the future of tennis come to life in the best way. There is all this concern about how the sport will decline once Djokovic and Rafael Nadal join Roger Federer in retirement. What is going to happen?
Dino Prizmic is going to happen. And Holger Rune. And Alcaraz. And sinner. And Ben Shelton.
The sport moves. May it always be like this.
And catch up on our latest pieces.
The player who surprised me badly
I chose Elena Rybakina to win the women’s individual event. She lost in the second round to Russia’s Anna Blinkova in an epic third-set tiebreaker that Blinkova won 22-20. It was crazy.
The best players suffer surprises, but the disappointing thing about Rybakina was that she disappeared in the final stretch of the match against Blinkova.
Rybakina won Wimbledon in 2022 and was a finalist here last year. She knocked down Sabalenka in the Brisbane final to start the season. Melbourne Park’s slippery hard courts are ideal for its smooth, flat power. He has a big, beautiful game and those long-arm serves are like a catapult.
But at the moment of truth, when you thought she would just beat her opponent into submission because she’s so much better and she’s a Wimbledon champion, she disappeared, playing a kind of softball tennis, trying not to make mistakes, and so on. supposed. Of course, she made a lot of them.
Former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina disappointed in Melbourne (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)
It reminded me of the final set of the 2020 US Open final between Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem. Two big hitters trying with all their might not to lose.
That is no way to live, neither on nor off the tennis court.
Everyone off the court was talking about…
Why does Alexander Zverev play tennis?
Zverev has not only been accused of domestic violence. In October, a Berlin criminal court issued a sanctions order, fining Zverev almost $500,000 (£393,000) in relation to allegations by his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Patea, the mother of his daughter. In Germany, a prosecutor can request a sanction order in cases that he considers simple because there is compelling evidence that should not require a trial. The defendant has the right to challenge the order, as does Zverev, and will face trial in May.
In media interviews and complaints filed with German legal authorities, she alleged that Zverev pushed her against a wall and strangled her during an argument in 2020. Patea said she told her friends about the incident at the time, but did not report it. to the police until October. 2021 out of a mix of shame and concern for her daughter, who was born in March 2021.
Zverev has denied all charges. ““Anyone who has a half-decent IQ level understands what’s going on,” he said after his semi-final loss to Medvedev. He didn’t expand.
GO DEEPER
Why Alexander Zverev is allowed to play despite domestic abuse allegations
This is the second time an ex-girlfriend has accused Zverev of abuse, although the first time he did not press charges. None of this was mentioned in the episode of the Netflix show Break Point that featured Zverev, or in the on-court interviews after his victories.
The closest anyone affiliated with the tournament came to mentioning it was Jelena Dokic, the former player and abuse survivor, who announced during an on-court interview with Sabalenka following her semifinal victory over Coco Gauff that Sabalenka would sign a towel and it would be auctioned off. . and profits will go to victims of abuse.
Sports fans and professional athletes have become accustomed to a system in which athletes serve some sentences while these types of charges make their way through the legal system.
Tennis does not have a policy that addresses these types of situations. The men’s tour, the ATP, has said for the past two years that it is working on it.
It is? Actually?
What should the United States think of this tournament?
The men’s Grand Slam drought may last a while.
Taylor Fritz was the last American standing. He performed better against Djokovic in the quarterfinals than he usually does: Fritz took him to a tiebreaker in the first set and then fought off seven break points to level the match in the second. But after two sets, he was exhausted and Djokovic ran through him down the stretch. He said that he has to work harder to get to a place where he can play four or five hours of physical tennis.
US men’s number one Taylor Fritz was defeated by Novak Djokovic (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Frances Tiafoe fell in the second round to Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic, a talented 23-year-old with a beautiful game who has barely done anything of note on the tour.
Immediately after, Tommy Paul lost in the third round to Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic. He had match points in the fourth set before losing it in the fifth.
Ben Shelton also got a tough lesson in the third round from Adrian Mannarino, 35, the Frenchman who wears his racquets as loose as a bedroom mattress, who used Shelton’s power against him. Mannarino, the definition of a crafty veteran, tied the 21-year-old’s ankles in knots all afternoon.
They are all solid players. Shelton and his 150 mph serve and athleticism could very well carry him to a big win in short order. He is still so raw, like an artificial intelligence robot that constantly collects information and progresses rapidly. He will be better for that Mannarino defeat.
But everyone would agree that they are not where Alcaraz, Sinner and a handful of other young people are now. The rankings say they are better than all but about 20 players in the world. Pretty cool, but that’s not what they want. That’s not why they are doing this and it can be overwhelming.
As Collins said: “This is a hard life.”
(Top photo: Dino Prizmic, right, greets Novak Djokovic; by William West/AFP via Getty Images)
