What we learned at the Australian Open: from Prizmic's promise to the elephant in the room
If this month's Australian Open is to be believed, 2024 promises to be a high-octane year.
The first Grand Slam of the season was delivered. In men's singles, Jannik Sinner roared back from two sets down to beat 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-set victory over Zheng Qinwen .
Sinner stole the spotlight as the latest member of the 'next generation' to win a Grand Slam title, but other young talents set markers for their progress towards the pinnacle 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 match I enjoyed the most
Like most people, I had circled the top corner of the women's draw when I entered the tournament. World No. 1 Iga Swiatek had Sofia Kenin in the first round and would face the winner of Danielle Collins and Angelique Kerber in the second round. That's three Grand Slam winners and a finalist in a small corner.
I thought Collins, a gutsy free-hitter who loved to compete and had previously beaten Swiatek at Rod Laver Arena, would give Swiatek hell, and she did. Collins destroyed Swiatek during the second set and the first half of the third, taking everyone on a journey, as she so often does. She led by two breaks in the third. Swiatek said she was already on her way to the airport in her mind.
And then… and then…
Isn't that the story of tennis? One player buckling under pressure? An all-time great player getting off the mat? Collins suddenly became shaky out of nowhere. She's generally a pretty cool costumer once she sinks her teeth into a match. Not this time. Her swing speed slowed and Swiatek sensed her moment, playing five straight games to win.
The thing I will never forget
I'll stay with Collins for a moment. I caught up with her after that match, and I mean right after that match. She is known for going straight from the court to the press room during games. Often, sweat still beads on her forehead and her breathing is still labored as she speaks.
Except for a tournament stenographer, we were alone in the room. She was annoyed, but on her way to getting over it. We've known each other for a while. We share a love for surfing, yoga and introspection. Whenever we speak, she puts it all out there, which I appreciate. She holds an associate degree from the University of Virginia. Collins is a hardcore adult.
She said the losses, even a loss like that, aren't that bad because she was at the end of her career – this is probably her last year on tour.
Danielle Collins plans to retire this season (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)
I didn't understand what she said. She's only 30 and she's just pushed the world number 1 to her limits. She still has so much beautiful tennis left in her.
She said she has other things she wants to do. Family is important and she wants to start one. The training, the travel, the loneliness of the road and the game, it's taxing her and she's not afraid to admit it.
“This is a hard life,” she said.
And one more thing that will really stick with me: Sportswriters of a certain age told me stories about watching Major League Baseball legend Mickey Mantle stagger through the outfield on shot knees in his final season. It wasn't pretty, they said.
Andy Murray wasn't quite like that in his first round loss to Tomas Martin Etcheverry, but he was slow, stiff, flat and emotionless and, well, nothing close to Andy Murray, not even the versions of the metal hip Andy Murray of recent years.
He's earned the right to play as long as he wants and go out on his own terms, but to see him struggling like this, unable to move and bend and do all that exciting Andy Murray stuff , that's something I can't ignore. .
The player who surprised me in a good way
I didn't know much about Dino Prizmic, the 18-year-old qualifier from Croatia with the tree trunk thighs, until he bullied Novak Djokovic in the first round around Rod Laver Arena.
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 fearless and hit the ball like Carlos Alcaraz.
I loved every second of it because I felt like I was seeing the future of tennis come to life in the best way. There's all this talk about how the sport will dwindle once Djokovic and Rafael Nadal join Roger Federer in retirement. What's going to happen?
Dino Prizmic is going to happen. And Holger Rune. And Alcaraz. And sinner. And Ben Shelton.
The sport moves. May it ever be so.
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The player who surprised me in a bad way
I picked Elena Rybakina to win the women's singles. She lost in the second round to Russia's Anna Blinkova in an epic third-set tiebreak, which Blinkova won 22–20. It was crazy.
Top players suffer setbacks, but what was disappointing about Rybakina was that she disappeared during the course of the match against Blinkova.
Rybakina won Wimbledon in 2022 and was a finalist here last year. She destroyed Sabalenka in the Brisbane final to start the season. The smooth hard courts at Melbourne Park are ideal for her smooth, flat power. She has a big, beautiful game and those long-arm serves are like a trebuchet.
But in the moment of truth, when you thought she was just going to force her opponent into submission because she is so much better and is a Wimbledon champion, she disappeared, playing a kind of softball tennis, trying not to make any mistakes. making, and so on. 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 slicefest final of the 2020 US Open final between Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem. Two huge hitters trying so hard not to lose.
That's no way to live, on or off the tennis court.
Everyone off the field was talking about…
Why does Alexander Zverev play tennis?
Zverev has not only been accused of domestic violence. In October, a criminal court in Berlin issued an injunction, fining Zverev almost $500,000 (£393,000) in connection with allegations made by his ex-girlfriend, Brenda Patea, the mother of his daughter. In Germany, a prosecutor can request a criminal warrant for cases he considers simple, because there is convincing evidence that does not require a trial. The defendant has the right to challenge the order, which Zverev does, and he will stand trial in May.
In media interviews and claims filed with German legal authorities, she has alleged that Zverev pushed her against a wall and strangled her during an argument in 2020. Patea said she told friends about the incident at the time, but did not find out until October had reported it to the police. 2021 due to a mixture of shame and concern for their daughter, who was born in March 2021.
Zverev has denied all allegations. “Anyone with a reasonable IQ level understands what is 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 violence allegations
This is the second time an ex-girlfriend has accused Zverev of abuse, although the first did not press charges. None of this was mentioned in the episode of the Netflix show Break Point that featured Zverev, or in the “bro-ey” on-court interviews after his wins.
The closest to the tournament was Jelena Dokic, the former player and abuse survivor, who announced during an on-court interview with Sabalenka after her semi-final victory over Coco Gauff that Sabalenka would sign a towel and that they would auction it off. disabled, with the proceeds going to victims of abuse.
Sports fans and professional athletes have become accustomed to a system where athletes serve a sentence while these types of charges work 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 been saying it has been in the works for two years.
Is the? Real?
What should America think of this tournament?
The drought at the men's Grand Slams could continue for a while.
Taylor Fritz was the last American man standing. Against Djokovic he performed better in the quarterfinals than he often does: Fritz took him to a tiebreak in the first set and then fought off seven break points to level the match in the second. But after two sets he was up and Djokovic ran through him. He said he has to work harder to get to a place where he can play four to five hours of physical tennis.
US No. 1 Taylor Fritz was defeated by Novak Djokovic (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Frances Tiafoe went out in the second round against Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic, a talented 23-year-old with a beautiful game who has hardly done anything of note during the tour.
Tommy Paul lost immediately afterwards in the third round to the Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic. He had match points in the fourth set before losing them in the fifth.
Ben Shelton also got a hard lesson in the third round from 35-year-old Adrian Mannarino, the Frenchman who stretches his rackets as loosely as a bedroom mattress, who used Shelton's power against him. Mannarino, the definition of a crafty veteran, spent the afternoon tying the 21-year-old's ankles in knots.
They are all solid players. Shelton and his 150 mph serve and athleticism could carry him to a big win before too long. He's still as raw, like an AI bot constantly gathering information and making rapid progress. He will be better after that loss to Mannarino.
But they all agree that they are not where Alcaraz, Sinner and a handful of other young players are now. According to the rankings, they are better than all but twenty players in the world. Pretty nice, but that's not what they want. It's not why they do this and it can be crushing.
As Collins said, “This is a hard life.”
(Top photo: Dino Prizmic, right, greets Novak Djokovic; by William West/AFP via Getty Images)