Tennis Prose




Dec/17

15

Subplots Galore, As Australian Open Approaches

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By Scoop Malinowski

January marks the birth of a new tennis season and all the players are currently training and refining their bodies, minds and technical proficiency to achieve the best year of their careers in 2018. Each professional has new confidence and inspiration to add to their physical experience, with the sole ambition to make their lofty dreams come true on the court of battle.

Each player has his own odds of making tennis history and/or millions of dollars. And you can wager on your favorite players in 2018 at BetOnline Sportsbook.

Here are just some of the top stories as we get ready to enter the 2018 pro tennis season…

Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam champion, has not played since defeating sister Venus in the 2017 Australian Open final and is on the entry list to defend her title after getting married and giving birth. Williams has been hitting and training in Florida and inspired to re-eastablish her Serena supremacy.

Simona Halep is the WTA’s top ranked player but is still seeking to certify her ranking by winning her first major title.

Grigor Dimitrov lost a heartbreaker to Nadal in the Australian Open semis last year in five sets but he won the World Tour Finals in London and could be ready to take the final step to finally win his first Grand Slam major. 26 year old Dimitrov is currently ranked a career high 3.

Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka and Kei Nishikori return after prolonged hiatuses due to injury.

Up and coming stars Nick Kyrgios (21 rank) and Dominic Thiem (5) have seemingly hit walls in their progressions but we can never know just when they will explode for their big breakouts, like Stan Wawrinka suddenly did in Melbourne in 2014.

World no. 4 Alexander Zverev sputtered to finish 2017 but he is another serious threat who could make the big jump in January.

Aging veterans like Ivo Karlovic, now 38 and ranked 80, Victor Estrella, now 37 and ranked 83, Mikhail Youzhny, 36 and ranked 84, Andreas Seppi, 33 and 86, Gilles Simon, 32 and 89, are all desperate to get off to a good start to rebuild their falling rankings.

While the new wave of youngsters and top 100 newcomers, Stefano Tsitsipas (91), Tennys Sandgren (96), Laslo Djere (88), Marton Fucsovics (85), Daniil Medvedev (65) and the incredible Denis Shapovalov are all extremely driven to establish that they are solid top 50 main ATP Tour calibre players.

Can 27-year-old Caro Wozniacki, ranked no. 3 finally assert herself as a major champion?

Can 37-year-old Venus Williams go even higher than her ranking of no. 5 and threaten once again to win another major?

Can Caroline Garcia fulfill Andy Murray’s prophecy to be world no. 1? She is pegged at no. 8 right now.

Can the three Americans on the cusp of the top ten, Coco Vandeweghe (10), Sloane Stephens (13), Madison Keys (19), take the next step to the elite pantheon of the WTA?

Ashleigh Barty was out of the sport for a couple of years but now the 21-year-old Aussie is ranked 17 and has to be considered an outside threat to compete for the title.

Garbine Muguruza, Karolina Pliskova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Elina Svitolina, Jelena Ostapenko, Johanna Konta, Angelique Kerber, Daria Kasatkina are eight other players who could all have excellent chances to be the one to stand triumphant at the end of the fortnight.

Two other WTA darkhorses, who are in their 30s now, are no. 27 Peng Shuai and no. 30 Lucie Safarova.

And then there’s Maria Sharapova, also 30 and ranked 60, aspiring to revive her career as a top five stalwart.

23-year-old Eugenie Bouchard is ranked 82 and surely highly motivated to eradicate herself from ranking obscurity.

31-year-old Su-Wei Hsieh, the former world no. 1 in doubles, has said this will be her last year of singles play and surely she would like to make her final singles season a special one to remember.

20-year-old Belinda Bencic has resurfaced back into the top 100 after a tremendous run of success to finish 2017. Ranked 98, the Swiss Miss is on her way back to the top 15 hopefully.

And finally, Jack Sock blasted his way to the top ten with stunning late season success in Paris Masters (where he won) and WTF (where he made the semis). It’s possible he can continue to ride the wave and become the first American major champion since Andy Roddick in 2003.

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61 comments

  • Hartt · December 21, 2017 at 11:24 am

    I think the players who become top players are so driven that they don’t need a lot of outside pressure. Sure, having a peer (or peers) that that is competitive helps. Denis and Felix are very clear that they have a rivalry where they push each other, as well as a close friendship. But both decided as kids that they wanted to get to the top of tennis and they have that obsessive drive to try to achieve that goal.

  • Scoop Malinowski · December 21, 2017 at 5:56 pm

    To get to a SF of a major with Serena in the draw is comparable to winning a major in another era. Serena’s appetite for destruction is eating up a lot of majors on many deserving players.

  • catherine · December 21, 2017 at 7:04 pm

    Serena has lost the occasional match 🙂

  • Andrew Miller · December 21, 2017 at 7:13 pm

    I don’t believe being driven is sufficient, all these folks are driven. Players have all sorts of motivations. Probably the biggest thing is a supportive team and straight up talent. I’d add peer pressure because it’s played a major role, these players respond to a pecking order. A guy like Steve Johnson nay say he has no ranking goal every year, but I know he’s well aware if he slips from being the second best USA men’s player to number five on the depth charts.

    Just as Federer is aware if Wawrinka is ahead of him. Or if Nadal is aware Djokovic is playing better or worse than he is. That’s a social awareness and admitting there’s such thing as a hierarchy in tennis, even if the sport has an any given day ethic where upsets are possible.

    Shapovalov may be driven to be the best. But other Canadians should be driven to take his spot. That will push him as well. Dancevic didn’t have that extra layer behind him nor did Canada have much of a tennis legacy before him. With Raonic being a top ten player suddenly they do have something to aim at.

  • Andrew Miller · December 21, 2017 at 7:15 pm

    And that’s peer pressure, status, stature. Tennis is a gladiator sport.

  • catherine · December 22, 2017 at 2:27 am

    Andrew – Gladiators were out there on their on their own in the arena surely – can’t imagine there was much pressure to be first.
    Back of the queue was safer 🙂

    But your comment was interesting and I thought of the cohort of German girls, a whole Fed Cup team of Petrovic, Georges, Kerber, Siegemund, Lisicki etc , all more or less the same age, same level, all friends
    (as far as we know) all under the guiding hand of Barbara Rittner, so what made Angie break out from the pack ? Impatience ? Ambition ? Wanting to be the first to a GS and No 1 ?

    Same maybe with the French guys except no one’s really broken out there yet.

  • Hartt · December 22, 2017 at 6:47 am

    Andrew, regarding your theory about peer pressure, one situation I am interested in is Raonic, who is starting to be pushed by Shapo. At one point it looked like Pospisil would have that role, but Vasek never lived up to his potential. Milos was probably not particularly concerned about Denis and Felix because they are so much younger.

    But with his breakout season, Denis is suddenly the talk of Canadian tennis. He won Tennis Canada’s player of the year award, which Milos has owned for several years. So how will Milos respond to this young upstart?

  • Scoop Malinowski · December 22, 2017 at 8:36 am

    Hartt; Shapovalov vs Raonic is the match we all want to see soon, hopefully in Australia. And if draws are choreographed, I could see this matchup being choreographed.

  • Scoop Malinowski · December 22, 2017 at 8:47 am

    I once asked Lennox Lewis which tennis player would be the heavyweight champion if they all boxed in a special tournament, he answered, “Whoever wanted it the most.”

  • catherine · December 22, 2017 at 11:22 am

    Hana Mandlikova always claimed she blew out two Wimbledon finals because ‘I wanted it too much’.

    That’s possible.

  • Andrew Miller · December 22, 2017 at 7:35 pm

    Shapovalov is good for Raonic. Though less profile I think Kozlov and Fritz scared Querrey to his breakout slam results.

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