The 2025 Australian Open is almost upon us and there are some notable trends to observe before the event starts. What stats will dictate who wins the year’s first grand Slam?
- Jannik Sinner’s hardcourt dominance
Players have won the Australian Open convincingly before, but the way Sinner won it last year did look a bit different. Not only was he superbly dominant, he was also absolutely calm while doing so.
Even when he was down 2-0 in sets against Daniil Medvedev in the final, the Italian simply kept playing his game and trusting that he’s good enough to win, and he proved himself right because he did win.
He improved a lot since then and became an even better player, losing only a handful of matches, which makes him the top favorite to win it again. One just needs to look at his stats in 2024. He played 45 matches on hard courts (exhibitions included) and won 42 of them with only three losses, sweeping both hard courts majors plus the ATP Finals.
Two of his losses came against Carlos Alcaraz and one against Andrey Rublev. That’s an incredible amount of dominance and if he plays anywhere close to that level again, he will cruise through the draw in Melbourne.
- Novak Djokovic’s mojo
Novak Djokovic is the best player ever at the Australian Open. No player has ever performed as historically well at the event as he has. He won it 10 times, which is the most times any player has won in Melbourne, and that’s saying something.
It’s similar to the Nadal effect at Roland Garros in making everybody believe that he can do it anytime even if he’s limping and on one leg. His dominance in recent years was particularly impressive as he won the event four times in a row from 2019 to 2023 minus the 2022 editions, when he got deported.
If he wasn’t, he would have likely won that one too because from 2019 to last year’s defeat to Jannik Sinner in the semi-final, Djokovic won 32 matches in a row at the event.
Djokovic obviously isn’t playing at his peak or hasn’t played at his peak for a while, but he certainly can do it again. If he finds that level again in Melbourne then it’s not impossible for him to possibly play one more signature Australian Open and win it.
His chances this year are certainly going to be higher than they would be next year if he plays, so in many ways, this might just be the last dance for him. With the right approach, the motivation, and a bit of luck, things could fall in line for him.
- Can Medvedev get over the hump?
The second-best performer in Australia in the past 5-6 years has been Daniil Medvedev, who has stood in three finals so far, losing all of them. He lost against Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Jannik Sinner and in two of those, the latter two, he got really close to winning the event.
That’s an impressive feat for the Russian who does enjoy playing on the fast courts in Australia. He’s well known to lament slower hard courts like the one in Indian Wells so he loves to play on courts like the ones in Australia, and the results back it up.
Even so, he wasn’t able to get over the hump so far, and it’s unlikely that he will be able to do it again. Sinner is simply too good right now and Medvedev generally has a pretty bad matchup with him.
He can beat him and he does beat him still, but most of the time, the Italian just crushes Medvedev similar to how he crushes other players. His counter-punching defensive style simply doesn’t work and we saw that last year.
When Sinner started hitting from the baseline, Medvedev had no way of countering that.
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