Keystone
The new tennis season starts this week in Australia. As always at the beginning of the year, there are more questions than answers. But looking ahead to 2022 is particularly marked by uncertainty.
The journey to the first tournament locations demands a bit of effort from most tennis cracks, even in “normal” years in the family time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Now, for the second time in a row, the corona pandemic has made everything even more difficult. For the entry to Australia, where all the important tournaments of January take place, pages of forms had to be filled out, for the visa, for entry into the country and into the respective state. There was also a negative corona test before departure and after arrival in Australia.
How quickly the whole program can get mixed up has been experienced by some players in recent weeks, including many who were at the exhibition in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of December. The six participants who tested positive at the event also included Belinda Bencic and Rafael Nadal. Once in Australia, travel is kept to a minimum for the best in the scene. Twelve individual tournaments will be held in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne within four weeks.
For Bencic, the new season began unhappily with the corona disease. The Olympic champion was interrupted in her preparation and suffered from rather severe symptoms, despite being double vaccinated. A year ago, her preparation for the Australian Open had already suffered from Corona because she had to sit out a quarantine in an Australian hotel.
Bencic starts the season in Sydney next week. A lot is expected of her after the fantastic Olympic tournament and the moderate WTA season. In the Grand Slam tournaments in particular, she wants to take off in a similar way to Tokyo. From a Swiss point of view, she is currently the greatest hope for a brilliant result, even if Viktorija Golubic and Jil Teichmann are two other players in the top 50.
For men, Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka’s compulsory breaks have lasted for months. Your return to the tour shouldn’t be before spring; the Australian Open is definitely too early for both of them. Even if they can count on invitations from the tournaments at their comebacks, the multiple majors winners can expect a difficult re-entry with strong opponents in the first rounds.
At the end of January, the 40-year-old Federer will probably fall out of the top 30 in the world rankings, the 36-year-old Wawrinka only occupy a place around 150. The results, which were counted longer than usual due to Corona, will continuously be excluded from the evaluation in the coming months. As a result, the Swiss will be pushed further and further back in the world rankings in the next six months. Federer loses his last points in mid-July.
Because Rafael Nadal is also struggling with physical problems more and more often and Andy Murray is no longer part of the first guard, Novak Djokovic recently had to fend off the attacks of the younger ones almost single-handedly. It is questionable whether this will continue to work so well in 2022. US Open winner Daniil Medvedev and Olympic champion Alexander Zverev are ready. The most hopeful young Swiss will still need some time to get closer to the top. The best is 19-year-old Dominic Stricker from Bern, number 246.
Return of the Swiss Indoors
In Swiss men’s tennis, the successes of the juniors during the corona pandemic ensured the few highlights in Swiss men’s tennis. Otherwise, the time was marked by the injuries of Federer and Wawrinka and the cancellation of the Swiss Indoors. Now the Basel ATP 500 tournament is to finally celebrate its 50th edition in the last week of October. The other ATP and WTA tournaments in Switzerland will take place in Geneva in May and in Lausanne and Gstaad in July.
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