Held from February 8th to February 21st , the Australian Open is a 128 person draw where the best tennis players in the world compete to win a Grand Slam in Melbourne Australia. The reason it is so significant is because not many tennis players get the chance to ever win one. Just for reference, the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) holds four Grand Slams each year and they are the biggest tennis tournaments in the world.
This year we saw some amazing play from young players such as the Russian tandem of Danill Medvedev and Andrey Rublev, Canadians Dennis Shapavolv and Felix Auger-Aliassime, Alex Zverev, and Stefanos Tsitipas.
But we also saw older players such as Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Fabio Fognini, and Grigor Dimitrov make it deep into the tournament. These players proved that age is just a number and showed critics that they are just as capable as young players even if they are older.
As usual, Novak Djokovic ended up taking the Australian Open title and did it pretty quickly. This is the ninth time in his career that he has won this tournament and has extended this achievement for the last three seasons. So how well did he play? I wouldn’t even say he was at the top of his game during the beginning of the tournament. During round 2, Novak just had more experience and beat up and coming American stud Francis Tiafoe.
Then after he went on to beat another up and coming American by the name of Taylor Fritz. I’m sure many Djokovic fans were scared because Fritz took him to five sets. Everything was smooth sailing from there on out. Many fans were excited for the championship match up which was Danill Medvedev versus Novak. Many thought that Medvedev might take down Novak because he was hot and on an eleven match winning streak but this did not hold up like many wanted it to. Novak absolutely destroyed the Russian and only let him get 9 games throughout the match.
Zach Harris - Staff Writer