Australian Open 2020: What to Expect
Ashleigh Barty, the reigning French Open champion, is Australia’s best chance for a homegrown singles winner since Chris O’Neil claimed the 1978 women’s title. The top-ranked Barty, a Queenslander with Indigenous ancestry, has quickly become a favorite of Australian fans, beloved for both her unassuming personality and her preternatural court craft.
If she can handle the spotlight — and perhaps a fourth-round match with Alison Riske, who beat her at Wimbledon — Barty could become the first home champion of a Grand Slam event since Sloane Stephens won the 2017 U.S. Open.
Bushfires could overshadow, and even affect, play.
Predicting contenders at this tournament has taken a back seat to forecasting the winds. When the winds have blown into the city from the east, smoke from the nearby East Gippsland bushfires has cast a pall over the city and the tournament, dusting the air and creating a haze that caused breathing problems for players who were practicing or competing in the qualifying rounds.
The tournament director, Craig Tiley, has said that play will be stopped if the air quality is too poor, but players and spectators could struggle anyway.
Tiley promised that the tournament would begin and end on time and that play would continue under the tournament’s three retractable roofs regardless. But with 254 main-draw matches to complete in singles alone, any sort of bottleneck could quickly choke the schedule.
There is extra mileage on the top men.
The top men’s players had their traditional Australian Open preparations upended by the new ATP Cup, which was held in the first 10 days of the season and pitted teams against each other based on nationality. The goal was to generate more excitement than usual this early in the tennis calendar. How players will react once they reach Melbourne is yet to be seen, particularly players like Djokovic, Nadal and ninth-ranked Roberto Bautista Agut. They all reached the final between Serbia and Spain, each playing six singles matches.
There is already one player who will miss the Australian Open because of the new event: Alex de Minaur, the top male Australian player, pushed through an abdominal injury to keep playing for his country, ultimately sustaining a tear that forced him out of the Open.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/sports/tennis/australian-open.html?emc=rss&partner=rss