A Look At The 2020 Australian Open

by Bob Stockton

 

It’s official, the 2020 Australian Open Tennis Championship is underway. As the first “Grand Slam” event of the 2020 tennis season, this is the one the top players covet if they have any designs of capturing the Grand Slam of Tennis (winning the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open in same season).

About the Australian Open

The 108th edition of the Australian Open got underway on January 20, 2020 and is scheduled to run through February 2, 2020. The site of this year’s tournament is Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The tournaments includes the following competitions: Men’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Singles, Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles.

This will be the first edition of the Aussie Open to feature GreenSet, a hard court surface produced by GreenSet Worldwide. It will be interesting to see how players adjust to this new surface.

Prize Money: The men’s and women’s singles champions will receive A$4,120,000 with both players making it to the finals match getting a guaranteed A$2,065,000. The men’s and women’s doubles champions will receive A$760,000 with both teams making it to the finals match getting a guaranteed A$380,000. The mixed doubles champions will receive A$190,000 with both teams making it to the finals match getting a guaranteed A$100,000.

The Top Seeds

Not to diminish the importance of doubles competition, the remaining focus will be on the men’s and women’s singles competition. To that end, here’s the top 10 seeds in each of the singles’ divisions.

Men’s Top 10 Seeds

1. Rafael Nadal, Spain

2. Novak Djokovic, Serbia

3. Roger Federer, Switzerland

4. Daniil Medvedev, Russia

5. Dominic Thiem, Austria

6. Stefanos Tsitsipas, Greece

7. Alexander Zverev, Germany

8. Matteo Berrettini, Italy

9. Roberto Bautista Agut, Spain

10. Gael Monfils, France

Women’s Top 10 Seeds

1. Ashleigh Barty (AUS)

2. Karolina Pliskova (CZE)

3. Naomi Osaka (JPN)

4. Simona Halep (ROU)

5. Elina Svitolina (UKR)

6. Belinda Bencic (SWI)

7. Petra Kvitova (CZE)

8. Serena Williams (USA)

9. Kiki Bertens (NED)

10. Madison Keys (USA)

 

It’s noteworthy that Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka are the 2019 defending champions.

On the men’s side, Djokovic comes in as a 7-time Aussie Open Champ followed by Roger Federer with 6 wins a top-seeded Rafael Nadal with 1 win. In the last 16 editions, these three players combined have accounted for all but two championships with Marat Safin winning in 2005 and Stan Wawrinka winning in 2014.

On the women’s side, Serena Williams enters the 2020 Australian Open with 7 Aussie Open victories already sitting on her mantle. No other woman in the field has more than a one win. Ms. Williams is expecting a lot of attention given the possibility of this being the last Australian Open in her storied career.

First Week’s Results

With the first week of competition coming to a close, the 2020 Aussie Open has already seen a number of major upsets. The following is a rundown of the results through the first three rounds for both Men and Women (you can also check today match results at xscores).

Men’s Top 20 Round-by-Round Result Summaries (winner’s scores)

Round One – For the Men’s top 10 seeds, it was pretty much business as usual with each of the top 10 players winning in straight sets with the exception of 2nd-seed Djokovic needing 4 sets (7–6(7–5), 6–2, 2–6, 6–1) to dispatch of Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany and 4th-seed Daniil Medvedev needing 4 sets (6–3, 4–6, 6–4, 6–2) to beat Francis Tiafoe of the US. Top seeds falling in round one were 13-seed Denis Shapovalov of Canada falling to Márton Fucsovics of Hungary (6–3, 6–7(7–9), 6–1, 7–6(7–3) and 20-seed Félix Auger-Aliassime losing to Ernests Gulbis of Latvia (3–6, 6–7(3–7), 6–4, 6–3, 7–6(10–5)).

Round Two – The second round saw the first major defeat on the Men’s side with 8-seed Matteo Berrettini of Italy getting beat by Tennys Sandgren of the US (7–6(9–7), 6–4, 4–6, 2–6, 7–5). The only other top seed to struggle was 5-seed Dominic Thiem, who needed five sets to dispatch of Australian Alex Bolt (6–2, 5–7, 6–7(5–7), 6–1, 6–2). The other top 20 seed to fall was 18-seed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria losing to Tommy Paul of the US (6–4, 7–6(8–6), 3–6, 6–7(3–7), 7–6(10–3)).

Round Three – As round three rolled around, the competition got tougher as seeds matched up against one another. The notable upsets in this round included 6-seed Stefanos Tsitsipas defeated by 32-seed Milos Raonic of Canada (7–5, 6–4, 7–6(7–2)) and 9-seed Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain losing to Marin Cilic of Croatia (6–7(3–7), 6–4, 6–0, 5–7, 6–3). It’s noteworthy that 3-seed Roger Federer struggled to a five set win over John Millman of Australia (4–6, 7–6(7–2), 6–4, 4–6, 7–6(10–8)).

Women’s Top 20 Round-by-Round Result Summaries (winner’s scores)

Round One – Through round one, all of the Women’s Top 10 got off to good starts with only top seeded Ashleigh Barty of Australia needing three sets to defeat Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine (5–7, 6–1, 6–1). Top 20 departures included 12-seed Johanna Konta falling to Ons Jabeur of Tunisia (6–4, 6–2).

Round Two – In the second round, the Top 10 Women’s players continued to hold sway with all of them recording straight set victories. Of the next 10 seeded players, there were four departures, including 11-seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus losing to Carla Suárez Navarro of Spain (7–6(8–6), 7–6(8–6)), 13-seed Petra Martić of Croatia beaten by Julia Görges of Germany (4–6, 6–3, 7–5) and 20-seed Karolína Muchová of the Czech Republic losing to Catherine Bellis of the US (6–4, 6–4).

Round Three – The action took off in the third round for the Women with 6 of the Women’s top 10 seeds falling to upsets. The two most notable upsets came when defending champ and 3-seed Naomi Osaka was defeated by US teenager CoCo Gauff (6–3, 6–4) followed by 8-seed Serena Williams of the US losing to Wang Qiang of China in a very close match (6–4, 6–7(2–7), 7–5). Other third round top 10 upsets included 2-seed Karolína Plíšková of the Czech Republic going down at the hands of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia (7–6(7–4), 7–6(7–3)), 5-seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine falling to Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain (6–1, 6–2), 6-seed Belinda Bencic of Switzerland downed by Anett Kontaveit of Estonia (6–0, 6–1) and 10-seed Madison Keys of the US losing to Maria Sakkari of Greece (6–4, 6–4).

Moving Forward

Moving into round four and the second week of competition, the Men’s bracket is largely intact, making for some excellent match-ups in the late rounds. To date, both Djokovic and Top Seed Rafael Nadal look headed for another finals collision.

On the lady’s side, upsets have opened the door for a number of players outside the Top 10. If that’s to happen, they will all have to get by Australia’s Barty who looks like she is playing in full stride.