While the rest of the world continues to face the daily uncertainty of a pandemic-affected existence, the voracious beast of tennis marches on.
The plans for the first part of the 2021 season have been laid out with ATP outlining their early schedule. Players will be invited to crisscross the globe to Antalya and Delray Beach for the first two weeks before settling in Melbourne for a condensed Australian swing. Under the tireless leadership of Craig Tiley from Tennis Australia, Melbourne park has been divided into three separate bubbles each hosting a concurrent ATP tournament — a relocated Adelaide ATP250 event, a Melbourne ATP250, and the ATP Cup. The Australian summer will culminate with the Australian Open, this year held on the 8th of February in the same location. For lack of space and pandemic inspired safety measures, an agreement has been reached to hold the AO qualifying round in Doha.
At a time when elite sports struggle to carry on within the safety of artificially formed bubbles, the COVID-19 related restrictions will be stricter than ever. Players arriving in Australia will be asked to quarantine for 14 days with no outside contact apart from daily training sessions with one designated person. Rather than perceived as draconic, these measures are by now a sign of the times and the future to come should tennis be allowed to continue.
Almost a year into the new normal, the unusual circumstances are unlikely to affect the storylines of the 2021 tennis season. The spotlight, as always, will be on the Big3. With Federer’s first absence from the Australian Open in his 23 year long career, Nadal and Djokovic are expected to compete for the main prize, and anything shorter than a quarterfinal will be deemed a disappointment. Both players have stepped up to lead their nations in the ATP Cup the week before the inaugural Slam of the year, but with the event lacking the actual prestige of bigger tournaments, it is unlikely that either will treat it as anything more than a warm-up for the main event of the Australian summer. The pair have spent the offseason on recovery, but, as evidenced by their social media presence, didn’t shy away from the tennis court, either. Regardless of the form in which they arrive in Australia, the shadow they cast on everyone else inside the sport still makes them the players to beat.
But what about the best of the rest? The Next Gen powerhouses Dominic Thiem, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev, Alexander Zverev, and Daniil Medvedev will be looking to make an impact and shift their own narrative from also-rans to genuine contenders. Thiem and Zverev will be looking to build on their US Open performances and the level of tennis they displayed in the second half of the season. While Thiem has long shown his ability to compete in Slams, Zverev has finally dispelled doubts about his capacity to fight through multiple five-setters over the course of 2 weeks — a must-have for any player thinking seriously about the trophy. The other three have enjoyed a strong year maintaining their position within the top-10 and collecting a number of honours along the way. Altogether, the five have lifted 11 out of the 32 available trophies in 2020, and they show no signs of stopping.
Deep inside our hearts, in places we don’t tell others about, we all hold hope for just one more fortnight of grit, pure determination, sheer power of will, and something akin to magic that would result in an Andy Murray or Stan Wawrinka resurgence. Given their current form, however, the likelihood of that happening is disproportional to the frenzy it would send the tennis world into.
Jannik Sinner and Thiago Seybouth Wild are two of the young players coming up on the back of the Next Gen group. The Next Next Gen, if you will. Both youngsters have claimed their maiden ATP titles in 2020, and while they may not yet be at a level required to compete in a Slam, over the coming season, they are the players expected to make big jumps in the ATP rankings and potentially add to their trophy tally. Their less successful but equally talented peers such as Emil Ruusuvuori, Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, Jiri Lehecka, Sebastian Korda, or Brandon Nakashima are all well equipped to impress in 2021 and position themselves amongst the challengers of the established order.