Australian Open | Juan Pablo Varillas and the challenge of the Grand Slam in this 2023: this is how he reaches the qualy in Melbourne | Tennis | SPORT-TOTAL

World tennis is one of the few sports that offers you high-level competition at the start of the year. Barely a week from 2023 and we can already enjoy what a Grand Slam is like with the Australian Open, where we want to see our compatriot Juan Pablo Varillas.

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With his 105th ATP position, the Peruvian was very close to directly entering the main draw, but starts as one of the seeded teams in the qualy. It is not little, so a good draw is expected for him, although at this level nothing is easy to face. The draw determined that he does not play this Sunday, so he must do so on Monday. The Peruvian will face lower-ranked rivals on his way.

Juan Pablo thus faces his eleventh year as a professional, the fourth in which he is fighting to get into the Grand Slam. Let’s remember that last year he earned the right to be in the main draw at Roland Garros, his favorite tournament, but he has an outstanding debt with hard court tournaments.

This will be the third time that he has played the qualy of the Australian Open. In the previous two (2020 in his GS debut and last year) he won one match and lost in the second. This time he aims to overcome the three previous games to get into the elite of tennis.

As we know, Juan Pablo does his training in Argentina. His last tournament was the Sao Leopoldo Challenger in Brazil, where he won the title, last November. He then trained in Buenos Aires with the Tennis Training Pro team, where he shares with Gonzalo Bueno, and under the command of his coach Diego Junqueira.

—What’s coming—

After his stay in Australia, which we hope will be a long one, Varillas will have to return to South America to compete in the Dove Men + Care Circuit. According to the Tenis al Máximo portal, the Challenger of Concepción could play – it is the fifth seed – and then go to the ATP of Córdoba and Buenos Aires, A Río and Santiago de Chile, but it must also take into account the series against Ireland for the Cup Davis from the first week of February.

The season begins in which Varillas must take the big leap towards the top positions. In 2022 he won a Challenger title and qualified for two other finals, had an ATP 250 Gstaad quarterfinal from qualifying and reached the main draw at Roland Garros. That series of combinations allowed him to get into the Top 100 for more than a month. Today he occupies box 105.

This 2023 Varillas defends 552 points, but the Peruvian tennis player does not usually take that: rather he faces his season according to the tournaments where he feels most comfortable and where he believes he has possibilities. With the ATP ranking that he has, today he can already aim for the ATP 250 and even the 500 and stop playing the Challengers.

In addition, it will be the year in which Juan Pablo consolidates his status as leader in the Peruvian Davis Cup team. With Lucho Horna as captain, Gonzalo Bueno and Ignacio Buse, both 18 years old, are expected to have more team activity. Although Nacho has leaned towards university tennis in the United States, he could still join the team, as Nicolás Álvarez did at the time.

Thus, Peruvian tennis is headed by Juan Pablo Varillas and from today he must show that he is in a position to fight on any court and against any rival.

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