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Just before the Wimbledon Championships this year, I said on Twitter two statements that many would have found perplexing at the time.
The first was that I felt Marinko Matosevic could go further than any other Aussie in the men’s side of the draw at the Championships, while the second was that he could be the number one Australian male towards the end of the season.
Both those predictions were to many unrealistic, mainly because of the position of those two players in the rankings and the previous results for Bernard Tomic, who did make the quarter final last year at the Championships and entered this year’s tournament as a seeded player.
The main reason I said both of those statements was because of the form both players had been in before the Championships. Despite rising up 13 spots since the start of this year, Tomic had only made it past the first round in one of his last three tournaments, which was at Roland Garros against a lowly ranked Austrian.
Compare this to Matosevic, who had climbed up over 100 spots and made two quarter final appearances and a finals appearance at Delray Beach and you could see why I made those two statements.
What followed at Wimbledon was nothing short of disappointing with both losing in the first round and providing Australia with no second round entrant in the men’s draw for the first time since 1938.
So while I wasn’t right about the first prediction, the result of Wimbledon influenced my second prediction. Following the Championships, Tomic went down 17 spots to 45, while Matosevic – who lost to Xavier Malisse – raised ten spots to 72nd in the world.
Since then, Tomic has failed to find form while Matosevic has moved from strength to strength. In three events since Wimbledon – including the Olympics – Tomic has lost in the first round in each match and also lost in straight sets.
This has seen his ranking go down to 49 in the world and leaves Tomic perilously close to going outside the top 50 for the first time since last October.
As for Matosevic, well his month has been the complete opposite. Despite first round losses in Newport and Atlanta, the Australian last week registered his second appearance past the semi-finals in ATP tournaments this year at Los Angeles.
Despite losing to unheralded Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis, Matosevic’s ranking rose to 64 in the world and importantly only 15 away from being the number one Aussie.
The other big positive for Matosevic heading into the final few months of the season, is that he doesn’t have to defend too many ranking points. Similar to Tomic last year, Matosevic will enter tournaments now guaranteed of points, while also not needing to defend any himself which will only move him higher in the rankings.
If you compare this to Tomic, it makes for interesting reading because the Australian has to defend almost a quarter of his points in the next few months. This includes 45 points at the ATP 1000 event in Canada and the US Open while Tomic has to defend 90 points in the ATP 1000 event in Shanghai and the ATP 500 event in Tokyo.
In order to keep his stranglehold as number one, you feel Tomic needs to defend those points and then add to them, trying to gain good runs at the US Open and other ATP 500 and 1000 events.
This becomes more important given the start Matosevic has had to the ATP 500 event in Washington DC this week. In order for Matosevic to be the number 1 Aussie by the end of the week, he needs 173 points.
Currently he has 45 after defeating American Jesse Levine 3-6 7-6 6-3 this morning and has an opportunity to make that 90 when he plays Tobias Kamke in the second round who he defeated in three sets the week before in Los Angeles.
If Matosevic makes the semi-finals this week then he will overtake Tomic and that could be possible given the draw the Aussie has in the tournament.
No matter what the outcome of this week is though, you feel it is just a matter of time before Matosevic overtakes Tomic as number one and not many, including me would have thought about that 12 months ago.
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