Australian Open: the glorious rut of men's tennis

Updated

Men's tennis has been through an amazing golden age, but it has also become highly predictable, with only a small handful of players divvying up the major trophies, writes Greg Jericho.

The Australian Open, now into its third day, will always give us a few certainties. There will be Aussies bundled out; there will be Samantha Stosur winning a first set comfortably then instantly being broken in the second; there will be matches that go on for days (perhaps even literally). But most certain of all is that the men's tournament will be won by one of the top-seeded players.

For mine, the Australian Open is the best two-week exemplar of the sport. It's played on a fair court for both big servers and good returners in a stadium, and the first grand slam of the year gives everyone a chance to start anew - the hope of the year lies ahead.

Whereas in other sports being a champion in the first month of the season is enough to become a badge of derision, in tennis, being hot in January can make your career. But even such talk sees us lapse into focus on a very minute section of the tennis world. This is always the case with sport however - the champions get the coverage, they get the poetic newspaper articles, they get the David Foster Wallace prose.

But let us quickly turn our eyes from the gods to one of the 132 men who tried to qualify for 16 spots in the main draw to see the true brutality of the sport.

The top seed in the men's qualifiers (yes, even the qualifying tournament is seeded) was German Dustin Brown. He is currently ranked 101 in the world; back in 2011 for a brief two weeks he was 89th in the world. At the age of 29, it is doubtful he will see the top 100 again, but he's no mug. He is likely a better player than anyone you've ever met. He is most likely better than that kid you knew (or knew of) at school who at the age of 13 was beating everyone in the district and was getting free tennis racquets. That kid probably never made it out of juniors, and if he did, he probably didn't even get much past the top 1,000.

In last year's Wimbledon, Brown reached the third round - beating Leyton Hewitt in the second round. In the qualifiers in Melbourne, however, he lost in the first round to a bloke ranked 188th in the world.

And so back to the Challenger circuit he goes - that group of tournaments below the top-line ATP Tour events.

But at least he can look down on those playing the futures tours. Take young Australian Jordan Thompson. He won the tournament to get chosen to be a wild card entrant, and thus this 19-year-old ranked 319 in the world found himself playing in his first ATP Tour event, up against the 20th best player in the world. Not only that - he won the first two sets.

Tennis is like that at times. Dreams can come true. Young players can come through. Underdogs can play great tennis consistently for three hours or so, and win against much better opponents - opponents who are a level above when taken on a week-in-week-out basis.

But more often tennis is like what happened in the next three sets of Thompson's match against Jerzy Janowicz, which he lost comprehensively. And so Thompson will be back soon continuing his education on the tennis court, possibly boarding at the home of a member of the local tennis club while he plays in tournaments in Toowoomba, Bundaberg and Alice Springs, where a tournament win might net him around $1,500.

Last year I noted when Bernard Tomic suggested he would be in the top 10 by the end of 2013, that for him to do that would require the biggest jump into the top 10 since Novak Djokovic. The bad news is Tomic didn't quite get there - he went from number 64 to 51. But the good news is that if he makes the top 10 this year, it will still be the biggest jump since Djokovic.

I also noted that I couldn't see many players falling out of the top 10 men, and certainly not enough to see Tomic pushing his way in.

And so it came to pass.

At the end of 2013, only one man in the top 10 had not also been in the top 10 at the end of 2012. Only Janko Tipsaravic had fallen out (all the way down to number 51). It was the smallest change in the top 10 in 17 years:

But while the one change in the top 10 back in 1996 was an anomaly, the lack of change at the top of tennis last year was part of a trend that has occurred since 2002 - the year, perhaps not un-coincidentally, which first saw Roger Federer reach the top 10.

Now is a terrible time to be merely an above-average professional tennis player. The past 35 grand slam tournaments have been won by just five different players. And three of those 35 were won by Juan Martin del Potro and Andy Murray, leaving Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to divvy up the other 32.

By contrast, the last 35 golf major tournaments have been won by 24 different players. One of them, New Zealand's Michael Campbell, won after coming through qualifying.

Tennis is not one for upsets when it gets to the top level. In 2002, three of the men's grand slam titles were won by players seeded outside the top 10. In the past 30 years such an occurrence would happen around 10 per cent of the time. But since 2002, it has happened only once in the 44 tournaments.

And the Australian Open is the worst (or best, depending on your point of view). Since 1983, when the best men again began playing the tournament, only once has the men's winner come from outside the top 10 - Thomas Johansson who in 2002 was seeded 16. In the eleven years since, the lowest seed to win the Australian Open was the fourth seeded Marat Safin in 2005.

It's a brutal game, tennis. Few other occupations let you know exactly where you are ranked every day, and few others are so dismissive of those outside the very top. Being 51st in the world at most things in life would be considered quite brilliant. In tennis, it means games out on the back courts and the strife of having to go up against the number one player in the world in a first round.

Men's tennis is at such a point now that were the third seed David Ferrer to beat the second seed Djokovic, it would be considered among the major upsets of the past decade.

Men's tennis has been through an amazing golden age, but it has also been in a bit of a rut - a glorious rut of incredible tennis. The best have been staying the best for longer than in the past. And all sport needs continual regeneration. Federer and Nadal are already "your dad's favourite players".

Sport not only needs the great players; it needs the regeneration of youth. It has been over 10 years since the last real changing of the guard in men's tennis, and over these two weeks in Melbourne, we look for signs of lasting change, but for the moment it seems unlikely.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. View his full profile here.

Topics: tennis

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