Five who could fire in Melbourne
MELBOURNE: With injury clouds hanging over some of the top names in the game, here are five young men’s players who could take advantage by winning their first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open:
GRIGOR DIMITROV
The 26-year-old Bulgarian heads to Melbourne a dizzy third in the rankings behind only Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Nicknamed “Baby Fed” early in his career for his Federer-style game, Dimitrov has struggled to live up to the comparison and was as low as 40 in the world in mid-2016. But he bounced back to enjoy the best season of his career in 2017, winning four titles, including his first Masters crown in Cincinnati.
ALEXANDER ZVEREV
A giant young German who is seen as a trailblazer of tennis’s widely touted ‘NextGen’. The 20-year-old heads into the year’s first Grand Slam ranked fourth, and is coming off five titles last year. Zverev is one of just four men to beat Federer in 2017 when he defeated the Swiss great in the Montreal final. But Zverev has never made it past the fourth round of a Grand Slam, and he’s reached that stage only once, at Wimbledon in 2017.
DOMINIC THIEM
The 23-year-old Austrian finished the 2017 season with a title on clay in Rio de Janeiro and a year-end fifth ranking. Thiem claimed his first win over Novak Djokovic at the French Open quarter-finals on the way to reaching the semi-finals at Roland Garros for the second straight year. His boyhood idols were countrymen Stefan Koubek and Jurgen Melzer, while his favourite shot is the forehand and he prefers to play on clay.
NICK KYRGIOS
A volatile Australian whose potential has often been betrayed by his temperament. He brought last season to an early end when he surrendered to a long-standing hip injury, but has started 2018 in top form, winning the Brisbane International on Sunday, beating Dimitrov along the way. Kyrgios is aiming for a fresh assault on his home Grand Slam, where he threw away a two-sets lead to lose to Andreas Seppi in the second round last year. ANDREY RUBLEV
The 20-year-old Russian captured his first ATP World Tour title as a lucky loser at Umag before he became the youngest US Open quarter-finalist last year since Andy Roddick, beating Grigor Dimitrov and David Goffin before going down to world number one Rafael Nadal. Now ranked a career-high 32, the run in New York solidified Rublev’s status as one of the top ‘NextGen’ ATP players in the world.