With the first week over at the 2020 Australian Open, the men’s draw has yet to have a barrage of major upsets. The main Australian Open favorites remain in the mix. So far, last year’s semifinalist and winner of the Tour Finals, Stefanos Tsitsipas, is the only player out of the draw that many could have even remotely seen lifting the trophy.
Other than him, the “Big Three” are once again on course to have more big runs down in Melbourne, while players like seventh seed Alexander Zverev are looking to turn around a poor last 12 months whilst Dominic Thiem is looking for his first Grand Slam semifinal outside of the clay at Roland Garros. Impressively, Andrey Rublev has also continued his great form, extending his winning streak to 11 matches coming off two titles earlier this month, with former World #3 Canadian Milos Raonic seemingly fit again and near his best.
With all of that said, taking into account how the first week has gone and other factors such as Australian Open record, form and draws, just who are the four favorites and in what order as things stand:
Australian Open Favorites
4) Roger Federer
It should be pretty obvious why the six-time champion is so low on this list. Whilst he’s no doubt still one of the favorites to win the title, his third round match against Australian home favorite John Millman was a sore sight to see. Although hitting 62 winners along the way to winning a final set tiebreak 10-8, there was 82 unforced errors to go alongside them, perhaps made even worse that a huge majority were made on his forehand, his biggest weapon off the ground and arguably one of the best shots of all time. In all honesty, it’s amazing the Swiss superstar survived the first week, down a break in the fifth set and then 4-8 in the tiebreak. He’s rather lucky Millman imploded with a barrage of unforced errors to gift away a match he should have wrapped up.
The big question now is where Federer goes from here. The history of tennis suggests no 38-year-old should even be close to the level of tennis he is consistently reaching, but on the other hand the bad performances such as the one on Friday night are becoming all too common. Thankfully, on paper, the 20-time Grand Slam champion has a nice draw to the semifinals, with unseeded Hungarian Marton Fucsovics in the fourth round and then American Tennys Sandgren (ranked #100) or 12th seed Fabio Fognini (who has never taken a set off him in four previous meetings) in the quarterfinals. However, assuming he can pass those two tests, he will most likely play Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. He hasn’t beaten Djokovic in Melbourne since 2007. But who knows? Maybe the 38-year-old can turn back the clock one more time and produce a huge upset if that blockbuster semi-final were to happen.
3) Rafael Nadal
So far Rafael Nadal has been a mixed bag. Although yet to drop a set, his play early on was somewhat lackluster, from struggling at times against Argentine Federico Delbonis and going 1/17 on breakpoints for a majority of the match, he rectified things massively with an amazing performance against fellow Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta in the last round, which he dropped just seven games in and more impressively hit 42 winners to seven unforced errors.
What do I expect moving on? I expect much of the same as he produced against Carreno Busta. His draw here onwards is rough, from Australian Nick Kyrgios who holds a 2-1 head to head against him on hard courts, to potentially Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinals, the man who pushed Nadal to the brink in their only previous hard court meeting–losing 7-5 in a fifth set tiebreak at the US Open 16 months ago in an absolute epic.
It’s a tough draw for the World #1, and that’s not even mentioning the likely meeting with Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals and then Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic in the final, two men who he hasn’t beaten off clay since 2014 and 2013, respectively. It will be a huge ask for the 2009 champion to get another title here, but as long as he’s in the draw he’s still deservingly a big favorite.
2) Daniil Medvedev
This may be a surprise to most, but I believe Daniil Medvedev is right now looking like a great shout for his maiden Major. Coming off a stunning end to 2019, which included two Masters titles and barely missing out on the US Open title, he’s once again showing the form which led him to such success.
Admittedly, the 23-year-old’s draw so far hasn’t been testing, besides a tricky encounter with last year’s quarterfinalist Frances Tiafoe in the first round (which he handled nicely in four sets), but from here onwards it will be. Next up is 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka, who he beat en route to his maiden Grand Slam final last year, with then possibly German Alexander Zverev in the quarterfinals who leads the head-to-head 5-1.
Things are going to get very hard for the Russian over the next week but given the level he’s shown us he can produce, there’s no reason to think he can’t keep going and picking off big names one by one. And if he is to make it to the semifinals and finals, he’s shown enough in the past to suggest he can take it to Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic on this surface. The World #4 is a huge force to be reckoned with, and it’s only time until a Grand Slam arrives.
1) Novak Djokovic
As everyone expected, the favorite still has to be seven-time champion Novak Djokovic. Despite a complex start against Jan-Lennard Struff, who gave Djokovic his worst set loss scorewise at this event for six years, the Serbian is cruising along his way through the draw.
The scary thing is that we’ve seen in the past the World #2 dominate this event purely on his mix of defense and offense off the ground, but this year he not only comes into the event with his typical game style, but a new serve. Working with Goran Ivanisevic, the Wimbledon 2001 champion, they’ve slowly altered the serve to become more powerful and effective, and it’s showing. In his second round match against wildcard Tatsuma Ito, the seven-time champion won a staggering 93% of points behind his first serve. Think that’s a fluke? He backed it up in the last round against another Japanese player, Yoshihito Nishioka, winning yet again 93% behind it.
As we’ve seen in the past, if Novak Djokovic plays anywhere near his best in Melbourne, it’s game over for anyone else. He’s 3-0 against his fourth round opponent Diego Schwartzman and then 17-2 and 9-0 against his potential quarterfinal matchup in Croatian Marin Cilic or Canadian Milos Raonic. Even looking past that, the Serb has only dropped one set to Roger Federer here in their three previous meetings (all semi-finals ironically) and has never lost to World #1 Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open. Right now everything is looking great for the defending champion in defending his title, especially if his new serve keeps delivering.
