By Deborah Curtis-Setchell
Roger Federer, a VIP guest at this year’s Australian Open, once remarked how early rounds of tennis Majors pose a danger to big-name players when unknowns emerge from qualifying rounds with nothing to lose and go for broke, often unseating nervy seeds still adapting to court conditions.
Week one in Melbourne has certainly delivered its quota of shock fatalities, some unforeseen, some inevitable. Top of the list of exits was the first round demise of “Baby Federer”, former top 10 Grigor Dimitrov, picked by pundits as a dark horse for this event.
After a monumental surge at Wimbledon 2025, where he was two sets up and on his way to destroying top seed Jannik Sinner in Round 4, Dimitrov collapsed in agony with a torn pectoral and was forced to retire, handing Sinner a free pass to the final.
Melbourne was Dimitrov’s chosen venue to mount a 2026 comeback. Instead a lack of match practice took its toll and the Bulgarian suffered a straight set, first-round loss to in-form Czech Tomas Machac, 6-4 6-4 6-3.
Tantamount to those dashed expectations was the fate of Brazilian teenage star, Joao Fonseca. A severe back injury prevented him playing the latter part of last season, but Fonseca insisted his back had healed and he was back.
Despite taking the precaution of withdrawing from Brisbane and Adelaide, he stumbled in his opener, losing to main draw debutante and world No 85 Eliot Spizzirri 4-6 6-2 1-6 2-6.
Hardly a surprise
Bases on their dwindling form, left-hander Dane Sweeney’s first-round dismissal of 40-year-old French legend Gael Monfils 6-7 7-5 6-4 7-5 and former World No 1 Venus Williams’ opening loss to No 69 Serbia’s Olga Danilovic came as no surprise. And former US Open champion Emma Raducanu’s straight sets wipeout at the hands of No 55 Anastasia Potapova was almost expected.
One wonders why Monfils, Williams and former Australian champion, Stan Warinka don’t quit while on top instead of allowing their respective pulsating careers to bleed out on court.
Monfils became the oldest man (since Federer) to reach the 4th round of the Australian Open, in defeating 4th seeded American, Taylor Fritz last year — the perfect time to draw a line under your ATP chapter.
Instead one year later he is ignominiously relegated to becoming Sweeney’s biggest scalp on the Melbourne stage.
So too Williams’ 2026 wild card represented a bridge too far, depriving her of any trademark victory twirls, as she was thrashed by World No 3, Coco Gauff.
Djokovic the exception
That points to the sheer brilliance of 38-year-old, 24-Slam title holder, Novak Djokovic, who is the exception. He is still able to reach the quarters of Majors, regardless of physical disadvantages and curtailed Masters appearances.
“He should not be hanging up his gloves, until he gets that 25th title, which in his mind jettisons him above and beyond every other GOAT [greatest of all time]. I really hope he does it and then calls it a day and let’s everyone else get on with it,” said former British Davis Cup captain David Lloyd while playing golf in Florida.
Another man enjoying a round of golf, in the company of Federer and observing the Swiss maestro’s swing “to be as beautiful as his tennis game” was world No 1 Carlos Alcaraz, who disposed of his second-round opponent, Yannick Hanfmann like a hot knife through butter.
Djokovic destroyed qualifier Francesco Maestrelli, 6-3 6-2 6-2 with a performance described by commentators as “faultless — a match in which he hardly expended any energy”.
Well served
Nevertheless he was energetic in teasing Alcaraz about the Spaniard trying to emulate his new, more consistent serve. “He must give me the copyrights to it”, Djokovic joked. “I want a percentage every time he serves an ace.”
Alcaraz has been working on his serve in the off season, identifying it as a potential weakness, in an otherwise extraordinary all-round game. (Lest we forget, then World No 1 Jannik Sinner used his 2025 three-month “drug sabatical” to change and perfect his service action, which has undoubtedly paid dividends.)
More hotly debated than Alcaraz’s “poached serve”, is how the Spanish dynamo will cope psychologically in the absence of his long-term coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero.
Alcaraz amicably cut that umbilical cord at the end of last season, purportedly at the instigation of his father ― a recurring theme in modern tennis.
Both Greek and German No 1s, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev, have reinstated their respective fathers as coaches, and big-servingAmerican Ben Shelton makes eye contact with daddy Shelton, a fixture in his box, after almost every point.
Samuel Lopez, who coached Ferrero and was introduced into Alcaraz’s team by the former No 1 in 2024, assumed the head-coach mantel of his previous protégée with ease.
If the world No 1 is to lift his maiden Australian title, his first serve must be firing as consistently as he flashes that engaging smile — a happy Alcaraz equates to a lethal Alcaraz.
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