Australian Open Ten give shine to the extensive showcase of Novak Djokoviccandidate perhaps like no other for the throne of best tennis player in history. The Serbian has made Melbourne, the Rod Laver Arena, his private garden. He has won the last four times he has played the first major of the season (2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023). He didn’t do it in 2022 because he couldn’t play it after refusing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. He does not lose at the Australian Open, therefore, since 2018, five years ago.
And his executioner then was not Nadal in Federereither Medvedev o Zverev, greatest exponents of their generation. Either Wawrinka, who had eliminated him in 2014 and against whom he fought precious battles. The Serb fell to the South Korean Hyeon Chungwhich gave the bell of that edition against a Djokovic who was fighting to return to his best version after his elbow injury, which left him without winning any big the previous year, in 2017.
Since then, Djokovic’s career has been known by locals and strangers. He returned to number 1 and has chained victories to share the top of tennis with Nadal and Federer, or even surpass them. But what about Hyeon Chung? What happened to that South Korean who bombed Djokovicin the fourth round of 2018 and that he had also left behind nothing less than Medvedev and Zverev along the way in that same tournament?
Chung is from the same generation as the Russians Medvedev and Rublev. In fact, she beat both of them, in the semifinals and in the final, in the first edition of the Next Gen ATP Finals, in November 2017, two months before that famous victory against Djokovic. In that tournament he also beat Denis Shapovalov. He had the right to think that he was the leading talent of that generation.
The Asian tennis player 26 years, reached his first and only semifinal of a major at that Australian Open. Months later he managed to enter el top20 ATP (position 19 is his best historical ranking, in April 2018) and later, before Roland Garrosstarted an ordeal of injuries that comes up to today. In 2018 he did not play Roland Garros and Wimbledon and fell in the second round in the US Open. In 2019, he only played the first and last major of the season (second and third round, respectively), while in 2020, the year of the pandemic, he only competed in the previous round of Roland Garros, he did not even qualify for the main frame.
2021 and 2022 were spent practically blank due to a back injury, until he returned at the end of last year to play doubles at the Seoul tournament. Chung, what a fight to come back, He has no ATP ranking in singles since last August 15 and it is the number 543 in doubles. His last match on the ‘singles’ circuit is still the second qualifying round to reach the 2020 Roland Garros main draw, when he fell to Renzo Olive by 7-6 and 6-2.
The star who one day was the best of his generation and who knocked down Djokovic where Novak seems invincible He is only 26 years old, but injuries have wiped him out.
THE FALL OF HYEON CHUNG
- APRIL 2018, HIS BEST ATP RANKING, NUMBER 19
- APRIL 2019 LEAVES THE TOP100
- AUGUST 2022 REMAINS WITHOUT RANKING IN SINGLES
/origin-imgresizer.eurosport.com/2024/04/25/3955385-80321408-2560-1440.jpg?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1)
