Running tennis thread 2025

We're off and running with Australian Open tuneups, where some intriguing things have already occurred.

Aryna Sabalenka entered the year as the women's No. 1 and won the Brisbane 500 tournament, though she had a slow start in the final before subduing Polina Kudermetova in three sets. As the winner of the past two Australian Opens, she'll be the favorite heading into Melbourne, but...

Coco Gauff has been on fire of late. Coming off her victory in November's WTA Finals, in which she beat Sabalenka and No. 2 Iga Swiatek, Gauff swept through the United Cup last week, going 5-0 and beating Swiatek in straight sets to lead the U.S. team to the championship.

Meanwhile, Naomi Osaka got to the final in Auckland and was up 5-1 in the first set against Clara Tauson when she appeared to struggle physically. She held on to win the set 6-4, but then retired with an abdominal injury. Her status for the Open is up in the air -- latest thing I've seen is she issued a statement saying she's getting an MRI "to assess" but didn't think it was serious and is "optimistic" about Melbourne. We'll see where that lands.

On the men's side, Reilly Opelka, a 6-11 American with a huge serve, made the first big splash of the season with a 7-6, 6-3 victory over Djokovic -- now down to No. 7 in the rankings -- in the Brisbane quarterfinals. He then won a smashfest with fellow big server Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard but lasted only 13 minutes in the final against Jiri Lehecka before retiring with a back issue. Opelka has missed most of the past two years with hip and wrist problems. His game looked good in Brisbane, but the injuries are still a major concern.

Mpetshi Perricard is a guy to watch. Over the past year he's raised his ranking from 205 to 30. His serve is enormous, regularly in the 130-140 mph range, and at times beyond. Last year, he posted a 146 mph SECOND serve. In Brisbane, he showed there's more to his game than the serve, unveiling a powerful one-handed backhand. He'll be a difficult draw in Melbourne.

 

I’m really feeling the post-Federer/Serena/Nadal blues in this first week. Little worth staying up late/getting up early for. The people that follow the sport year round are hyping Fonseca, I guess. Hoping Osaka and Gauff meet in the fourth round.

I wish ESPN would have its commentators on from 7:30 ET even if it’s only on the app for the first hour or two.

 

Was out last night and caught the end of Navarro-Wang. Caught Navarro at +140 when she was down 4-3 in the third and she broke Wang twice to win 6-4. Fun. Saw Ons Jabeur has dropped to 39th in the WTA rankings. Really think that Wimbledon final she lost was her last real chance at snagging a major.

 

Into the third round and some notable tidbits:

The most obvious is the biggest upset of the tournament so far: 19-year-old American Learner Tien beat No. 5 Medvedev in a five-set second-round marathon that included three tiebreaks. It's shocking because Medvedev has become a fixture in hard-court major finals, appearing in six of them, including three of the past four in Melbourne. That includes last year, when he decided not to play any tuneup events before the Australian Open and it might have cost him the championship -- he muddled through a bunch of long five-set matches and clearly ran out of gas after going up two sets to love on Sinner in the final.

When I heard Medvedev wasn't going to play any tuneups this year, my first thought was, "Hasn't he learned?" Turned out he had a reason -- his wife gave birth just a week before the tournament opened, and he arrived in Australia just days before he was to play. He looked shaky in winning his first-round match, a five-setter against some nobody from Thailand in which he fell behind two sets to one. Is that why he lost to Tien? Maybe -- he finished the match with a very uncharacteristic 82 unforced errors and a 56% first-serve percentage. That said, Tien played some very high-level tennis, made some big-time shots and, most important, held himself together after Medvedev came back to send it into a fifth set. Tien's draw for the next two rounds is not terribly daunting, so we'll see what he's got from here.

Another teenager who could make a nice run is Jakub Mensik, a 19-year-old Czech who's coming off a win over No. 6 Casper Ruud in the second round. He's very much an up-and-comer who's beaten some big dogs before, including Rublev. He gets Davidovich Fokina in round 3 and could face Tommy Paul in the fourth if he gets there.

Djokovic, in the unfamiliar position of seventh seed, is into the third round, but he hasn't looked at all dominant in beating two guys ranked outside the top 100, losing a set up each of them. He's got a couple of potentially dangerous opponents just ahead in Tomas Machac and Jiri Lehecka, with Alcaraz looming after that. Let's see what he's got left.

Coco Gauff still hasn't lost yet this year, and she will be very tough to beat. But her first two rounds have made it apparent the serving issues that hurt her much of last year haven't gone away. She's averaging eight double faults in her two matches, both two-setters.

Early last year, Danielle Collins announced her plans to retire at the end of the season, citing health issues. But she reconsidered and is back in the third round after beating two qualifiers. The second of those was an Australian, Destanee Aiava, and the home crowd not only cheered for her, they taunted and booed Collins throughout the match. Collins' response pure Medvedev in New York, thanking the fans for her "big fat paycheck", egging them on with an "I can't hear you" signal, blowing kisses and then slapping her backside in what I interpreted as a "kiss my ass" message.

BTW, I don't make a lot of predictions, mostly because they turn out poorly -- such as my statement that Mpetshi Perricard would be a tough out. I mean. I guess that was true in a sense -- it took five sets and three tiebreaks for ageless Gael Monfils to knock him out in the first round. The biggest server in the game managed "only" 19 aces -- for comparison he had 36 in three sets a couple weeks ago in Brisbane -- but he did fire off a 144-mph rocket serve before saying bye-bye.

 

Coco had a cleaner serving match last night/this morning (U.S. time), with five aces, four doubles and 56% of second-serve points won in a straight-sets win over Leylah Fernandez. But the match with Osaka won't happen -- she was up a break on Bencic at 5-2 but began struggling, lost the first set in a tiebreak and retired due to a strained abdominal muscle. She first suffered the injury in October, and it forced her to retire from the Auckland final a couple weeks ago.

I didn't see the match (I don't quote stay up all night), but from what I've seen and read, Djoker looked more like himself in a reasonably comfortable 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 win over Machac. Next is Lehecka, who took care of business in a similar fashion.

Mensik is out (another prediction gone wrong) -- won the first two sets, lost a tiebreak in the third (in which he had a match point) and dropped the next two sets to lose in five.

Upset of the day: 7th-seeded Pegula was ousted by Olga Danilovic, a Serbian ranked 55th, 7-6 (3), 6-1.

 

Sasha Danilovic's daughter.

 

Stick a fork in Djoker. The end of an amazing two-decade era in men's tennis that sadly did not involve an American.

 

He won’t win the tournament but he’s still pretty fucking good.

 

Million-year-old Gael Monfils looks like he’s about to collapse and die after every point, but he’s out-thinking and outplaying No. 4 seed Taylor Fritz. He’s up two sets to one and just went up a break in the fourth.

 

And there it is. Monfis finishes it, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (1), 6-4. He was masterful. Served amazingly well —24 aces — and ran Fritz all over the court, killing him with angles and drop shots to draw him to the net, where Monfils beat him with passes or shots to Fritz’s feet that he couldn’t handle. Just brilliant.