The Australian Open begins on Sunday in Melbourne

The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, begins in Melbourne on Sunday. Its most decorated participant, ten-time winner Serbian Novak Djokovic, will defend his last year’s title and defend the title of first racket of the world, which is theoretically claimed by the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, as well as the Russian Daniil Medvedev. At the same time, Medvedev will start the Australian Open with a clean slate for the first time, without having played a single official match before him in the new season.

This year the Australian Open has an early start for the first time. The start of the tournament has been moved from Monday to Sunday, meaning it will last 15 days, just like Roland Garros. But the main intrigue of the tournament cannot be called new. On the courts of Melbourne Park, Novak Djokovic will have to defend his championship title for the tenth time, and with it the title of the first racket of the world, which only two competitors can take away from him – Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev.

At first glance, the Serb has a huge advantage over them. Having scored 11,055 rating points, he is 2,200 points ahead of the Spaniard, and 3,500 points ahead of the Russian. The question is that Djokovic now has to confirm 2,000 championship points, Alcaraz, who did not come to Australia last year due to injury, neither one, and Medvedev, who was eliminated in the third round, has only 90. That is, if we discard those points, the situation is somewhat different. Djokovic has 9055 points, Alcaraz – 8855, Medvedev – 7465, and the situation looks very intriguing. True, the Russian at the moment can top the rankings rather theoretically if he takes the title himself, and the Serbian and Spaniard do not reach the semi-final stage. This option, of course, cannot be completely ruled out, but for now it is unlikely. Alcaraz’s chances are much higher than Medvedev’s, but talking about them specifically will most likely make sense somewhere in the middle of the tournament, when he himself has completed several laps.

The point is that it is still problematic to assess the real form of the three favorites of the Australian Open. Djokovic played three matches at the United Cup, a mixed teams tournament between men and women that recently ended with Germany’s victory, winning two of them and suffering an injury to his right wrist that may explain his defeat to Australian Alex de Minaur. As for Alcaraz and Medvedev, they have recently taken part only in exhibition matches and tournaments. By the way, downtime in the first half of January is uncharacteristic for a Russian. Having competed at the Australian Open since 2017, the two-time finalist of this tournament invariably had at least minimal official playing practice before starting in Melbourne. So the current version of the start of the season for Medvedev, who ended up in the same half of the draw with Alcaraz, and in the first round will play with one of the winners of the qualifications, just like for Djokovic, by the way, can be considered experimental. But another Russian representative of the top 10, Andrey Rublev, who won the tournament in Hong Kong on Sunday, will begin the Australian Open with a match against the Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild, who was remembered in the previous season for his unexpected victory over Medvedev in the first round of Roland Garros.

At the women’s tournament, the centerpiece at first promises to be a match between world ranking leader Iga Swiatek and American Sofia Kenin. This tennis player of Russian origin, after her sensational triumph at the Australian Open four years ago, quickly faded into the shadows, dropped into the third hundred of the world classification, but last year she looked very decent at a number of tournaments and at the start of Wimbledon she beat her compatriot Coco Gauff, the future US Open champion, which just after this defeat sharply increased.

The part of the grid where 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva is located, the 47th racket in the world, the youngest tennis player in the top hundred, also looks interesting. She first meets with American Bernarda Pera, and then with a high degree of probability goes to Uns Jabir from Tunisia, who is sixth in the ranking. For Andreeva, the current Australian Open is her debut, although she has already made it into the main draws at the other three Grand Slam tournaments. The Russian woman was most successful at Wimbledon, where she reached the 1/8 finals. At Roland Garros, Andreeva was eliminated in the third round, and at the US Open – in the second.

Evgeniy Fedyakov