Opinion
As the Australian Opens winds down to an exciting conclusion, Tennis Australia and their performance manager and his team of analysts will be reviewing the performance of every Australian player who took part in this historic tournament.
Wally Masur and his team won’t be just looking at rounds won, sets won, games won or even points won. They will be looking at the performances of those – who by the rankings they achieved – made their own way into either the main draw or the qualifiers and especially those whose career gained a boost as a result of gaining a ‘wild card’ entry into the qualifying event or the main draw.
It is not just the financial reward associated with entry to a tournament that they may not have achieved entry to, but the special ranking points associated with gaining entry to the main draw.
While the ranking points are not the only measure of a player’s achievements over the past 12 months, they are certainly significant in deciding who has performed best in recent times and therefore – all things being equal – who should have the upper hand when they meet on the court.
For those players ranked outside the top 100 (and therefore likely to meet in the qualifying tournament of a grand slam event), a differential of up to 20 rankings is not considered significant and therefore there was no clear favourite in the first round men’s qualifying singles match between Australia’s Max Purcell (ranked 176) and Russia’s Evgeny Donskoy (172).
Similarly, there was no clear favourite as a result of there only being one ranking position separating Jason Kubler (Australia) at 206 and Lorenzo Giustino (Italy), 207.
Both Australians won their matches. In the case of Marc Polmans, he ranked 39 places above his first round opponent Geoffrey Bllancaneaux from France and therefore would be expected to win, which he did.
The three other Aussies who gained direct entry into the qualifying tournament – Matthew Ebden, Bernard Tomic and Andrew Harris – all had to face up to opponents ranked at least 85 positions above them and there a loss could be expected. However, Ebden not only beat the odds and defeated the 27th seed Mats Moraing of Germany but also won his second round match and fall just short of qualifying in the final round.
It goes without saying that the eight players awarded wild cards were well down the rankings from all the other players in the tournament and thus on form would be struggling to win their matches.
However, 50 per cent of these players recorded victories to justify the faith shown in them by Tennis Australia. Rinky Hijikata, Dane Sweeny, Philip Sekulic and Edward Winter all scored impressive victories against opponents who were ranked 234 in the world or lower.
The efforts of Philip Sekulic (ranked 990) and Edward Winter (ranked 1768), in particular, were outstanding when you consider they beat opponents ranked 756 and 1646 positions below them! Winter’s opponent, Gilles Simon of France, was the No.4 seed for the tournament.
With the exception of Ebden – as mentioned above – none of the Aussie men competing in the men’s singles qualifying tournament made it past the second round, but most put up a great fight, which suggests that Australian tennis is in fairly good shape and this impression is backed up by the amount of success experienced in the men’s, women’s and mixed doubles tournaments.
There may not be another Ash Barty among them, but I doubt that there are too many Ash Bartys anywhere in the world.
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