The 2025 Australian Open

The 2025 Australian Open has been quite competitive this year, with many top players being eliminated early on. In the first round, the 11th seed, Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, fell at the hands of unranked American Alex Michelsen, while the ninth seed, Russian Andrey Rublev lost to Brazil’s Joao Fonseca. This many of the world’s best tennis players being defeated in the very first round of the Australian Open shows just how competitive professional tennis is, and how anyone can lose on any given day.

The upsets continued in the subsequent rounds, as Casper Ruud, Frances Tiafoe, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Lorenzo Musetti, and Taylor Fritz all bowed out early. The skill gap is small even between the lower seeded players and the best of the best. Everything matters as a professional tennis player: power, control, and mentality are all aspects of the game that can sway a match, especially at the highest levels. A tennis amateur can get away with being slower than their opponent by making up for it in other aspects such as strength and mentality. In the pros, an individual must be almost perfect in each of these categories to be successful, and it is the minute differences in each skill that determine who is the best and who is not. 

Take mentality, for example. To be the best, you have to think the part. Many athletes are good at their sport but routinely come up short in the biggest moments. In the NBA, Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers is among the best centers in the league, a league MVP at that, however, he is not a winner. He cannot carry his team to a championship in the same manner that players like Giannis Antetekounmpo, Nikola Jokic, and Stephen Curry have done in the past—you can be good, but you can’t take the next step to be great unless you improve every aspect of your game. 

The younger generation is finally starting to make their mark in the tennis world. Players such as Jannik Sinner, Ben Shelton, Carlos Alcaraz, Tommy Paul, Alex De Minaur, and Alexander Zverev are trying to prove themselves here in the quarterfinal of the Australian Open. Each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. Shelton is strong and athletic but makes many unforced errors. Sinner is accurate, but he isn’t the most athletic. All these parts of the game are important in their ways. While each of the players has their strengths and weaknesses, the most well-rounded player of the young generation is Carlos Alcaraz. He blends his athleticism with his ability to read the game in a way that no one else does, leading many, including myself, to consider him the favorite to win the whole tournament. 

But to make it to the final he will have to defeat the greatest tennis player of all time: Novak Djokovic. Djokovic, along with Federer and Nadal, is a member of tennis’ fabled “Big 3”. Djokovic was able to win the most, but was he perfect? No. He had his problems, namely his numerous showings of frustration and bad sportsmanship, but his game outshined his mental struggles. Now, at the age of 37, he is on a downward trajectory, and this season seems like a do-or-die situation. If he doesn’t win this year, it might be time to close the curtain on his career. My prediction is that this will be his last year and he might win one or two grand slams, but not the Australian Open. His draw was not very good and he will have to face the aforementioned Alcaraz. It will be a test of attrition. As I have said earlier, there are many aspects to a player’s game. Djokovic is aging; he gets injured and fatigued a lot more easily, and he is not as quick as he used to be, but his tennis IQ has not diminished. This quarter-final match will be a test for Djokovic to see if he still has what it takes to win such a tough match at his age. This is sort of a final in a way, since I believe that whoever wins this match will win the tournament overall. Sure, the other matches they play will be close, but I think the winner of this match will determine the trajectory of the rest of the tournament.

All of this is to say that the higher the level of competition in any sport, the smaller the gap between players. In the pro scene, this can materialize in numerous upsets in tournament competitions at this year’s Australian Open. But in a more practical sense, it is important to remember you can’t become great unless you master all aspects of the game. Whether your main sport is tennis, swimming, wrestling, basketball, or anything else, there is always room to improve. Target specific parts of your game and keep training. Even the best players in the world have room to get better and so do you.