Ahead of the 2025 season, which is now just a few weeks away, Martin Keady, our resident tennis historian, identifies 10 possible highlights of the coming year.
Ten Things to Look Forward to in Tennis in 2025
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Resolution of the Jannik Sinner Drug Story – Either Way
Both Jannik Sinner himself and tennis in general need some closure to his ongoing drug test story after WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) announced that it was appealing against the decision by the tennis authorities, including the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), to largely exonerate the World No. 1 for failing two drug tests early in 2024.
Whatever happens, there needs to be some resolution, because the whole story continues to cast a shadow over the sport and call into question its entire integrity. If Sinner is finally cleared and WADA ultimately accepts the decision of the tennis authorities, then followers of men’s tennis can finally revel in the new rivalry emerging between Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the “New Two” who are replacing “The Big Three”. If, however, WADA recommends that Sinner be banned, his legal team will doubtlessly appeal, and the whole sorry saga will inevitably drag on.
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Carlos Alcaraz Going For The Career Slam in Melbourne
Carlos Alcaraz, the other brilliant young male player to emerge in the last few years, completed the tennis triple crown in 2024 by winning majors on the three surfaces on which the majority of tennis is played (hardcourt, clay and grass). In 2025, he can go one step further and complete the career Grand Slam by winning every major at least once. If he does so, he will become the youngest man ever to achieve the feat.
Alcaraz’s first opportunity to complete the career Slam will come in Melbourne next month. He is yet to excel at the Australian Open, with his best performance coming last year when he reached the quarterfinal. 2025 will not be his only opportunity to replace his illustrious compatriot, Rafael Nadal, as the youngest man ever to win all four majors; such have been Alcaraz’s prodigious achievements that he will have until 2027 to do that. Nevertheless, he will hope that he can complete the set at the first opportunity.
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The Novak-Andy Partnership
It is possible that Andy Murray will only coach Novak Djokovic for one major, namely the 2025 Australian Open, which was the timeline originally agreed between the two when their shock announcement was made at the end of 2024. That is because that tournament probably represents Djokovic’s last best hope of winning a 25th major and therefore breaking the record for most major singles title won that he currently shares with Margaret Court. However, if he does not win an 11th Australian Open title and therefore reach the quarter-century mark for major singles titles, it may be that the Novak-Andy partnership ends as suddenly and spectacularly as it began.
Djokovic may have won the Olympic Singles Gold medal that he craved in 2024, but otherwise last year was a largely disappointing one for the statistical GOAT, especially at the majors. It was the first year since 2017 that he had not won at least one major in a calendar year. Along the way he suffered comprehensive defeats by both Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz in the Australian Open semifinal and the Wimbledon final respectively. Consequently, if he cannot win in Melbourne at the start of 2025, no coach, however prestigious they may be, might be able to help him reach the 25-major mark.
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The Aryna-Iga Battle To Be Women’s World No. 1
After Ash Barty’s shock retirement at the start of 2022, Iga Swiatek was the dominant women’s World No. 1 for nearly three seasons in a row. However, at the end of 2024, Aryna Sabalenka, who for so long has been the World No. 2, finally surged past her and ended the year ranked as the best female tennis player in the world. On hardcourt in particular, the surface on which she won two majors in 2024 (the Australian and US Opens), she has become virtually unbeatable.
Swiatek is such a born competitor that she will surely be determined to wrestle the No. 1 spot back, starting at the 2025 Australian Open. Like Carlos Alcaraz, she is yet to excel in Melbourne, with her best run there taking her to the semifinal in 2022. Now working under new coach Wim Fissette, who has previously worked with Angelique Kerber and Naomi Osaka among others, she will be intent on reasserting her supremacy at the top of the women’s game. If she is to do so, however, she will almost certainly have to improve her game on surfaces other than clay, on which she effectively reigns after winning four of the last five French Open titles. Such is Sabalenka’s growing all-court game that clay-court domination alone may no longer be enough for Swiatek to rule the world.
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Karolína Muchová at Wimbledon
Like Swiatek, Karolína Muchová does not have a great record at Wimbledon, with her best runs at the grass Grand Slam coming in 2019 and 2021, when she reached the quarterfinal stage. Nevertheless, her all-court, all-shot game is surely built for grass and the hope is that in 2025 she can finally exhibit the full range of her sublime shot-making ability on the greatest grass courts in the world.
Muchová went close to winning her first Slam in 2024, when she went on an amazing run to the US Open semifinal. She could not quite go all the way in New York, as she seemed to run out of energy in her last-four encounter with Jessica Pegula after initially dominating it. Perhaps that was an inevitable consequence of having only just returned to court after six months out with a wrist injury, which, of course, is just the latest in the long line of injuries to befall the Czech maestre. However, if she can stay fully fit and fully focused, then Wimbledon 2025 would appear to be the perfect stage for her to prove that she is the closest tennis has come to producing a female Federer.
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Young French Men Doing Well at Roland Garros
If the biggest single hope for the Slams in the year ahead, especially among tennis purists of all nationalities, is that Karolína Muchová can finally produce her best form on the grass at Wimbledon, then among French fans the particular hope is that at least one of the new cohort of French male stars can finally go deep on the clay at Roland Garros.
It is over 40 years since a French man last won the French Open. That was Yannik Noah in 1983, which was so long ago that Noah won the event with a wooden racket. The previous Frenchman to win the French Open before that was Marcel Bernard in 1946, at the first tournament after World War Two. So, French men’s tennis fans have not exactly been spoiled for success over the last century or so, or since the hey-day of Les Musquetaires in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The current crop of French male starlets might not be of the calibre of Borotra, Brugnon, Cochet and Lacoste, but they do have the potential to do well at their home Slam, beginning next year. Arthur Fils and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard have won Lyon, the last big warm-up event before Roland Garros, in the last two years, and there is also Luca Van Assche, who beat Fils in the 2021 French Open Boys’ Final and whose surname fittingly rhymes with panache. Add to their number Ugo Humbert, Corentin Moutet, Arthur Cazaux and the diminutive but brilliant Hugo Gaston and there is no shortage of young male French talent. The challenge for them now is to show their ability in Paris.
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Hamad Medjedovic Finally Showing His Serving Power Consistently
Hamad Medjedovic won the 2023 Next Gen event, the showcase for the best young stars in men’s tennis whose previous winners include Jannik Sinner (in 2019) and Carlos Alcaraz (in 2021). The precocious Serb is yet to follow in the footsteps of Sinner and Alcaraz by following up Next Gen success with consistent performance on the ATP Tour, let alone Slam victories, but the hope is that next year he will finally rediscover all the form that he showed in Jeddah a year ago.
Then, Medjedovic beat the highly fancied Arthur Fils to win the Next Gen title, doing so with such phenomenally powerful and accurate serving that he added another nickname (The Serb With The Serve) to his existing one (Hamad The Hammer). Now, the challenge for Medjedovic is to translate all his innate serving ability, which is allied to an impressive all-court game, into consistent performance, in order to rise up the men’s rankings in 2025.
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An Alcaraz Wimbledon Hat-Trick
In addition to trying to complete a Career Slam in 2024, Carlos Alcaraz will surely be bidding for a Wimbledon hat-trick, having won in London SW19 in the last two seasons. In both 2023 and 2024, he defeated Novak Djokovic in the final, thereby denying Djokovic an eighth Wimbledon title and allowing Roger Federer to retain his last remaining statistical title as The King of Grass.
However, FedHeds should be careful what they wish for, because such is Alcaraz’s newly established domination of Wimbledon that he might end up challenging Federer’s Wimbledon record himself. With Djokovic surely near the end of his career and none of Alcaraz’s contemporaries, including Jannik Sinner, having yet shown that they can win on the fastest and therefore the most demanding surface in tennis, an Alcaraz Wimbledon hat-trick in 2025 might just be the precursor to an even longer run of success at The Championships.
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Other Italian Players Joining The Tennaissance
The Tennaissance, or the remarkable rise of Italian tennis in the last few years, has largely been led by Jannik Sinner, who has not only won two Grand Slam titles but led his country to Davis Cup glory twice. Now the challenge for other Italian players is to emulate Sinner and translate triumph in team tennis events into sustained performance, and perhaps even success, at the majors.
On the women’s side, the obvious candidate to follow Sinner’s lead is Jasmine Paolini, whose transformation in 2024 from virtual also-ran to two-time Slam finalist, Olympic champion and Fed Cup winner was one of the most remarkable in tennis history. Having gone so close at Roland Garros and Wimbledon last year, Paolini will hope that she can really follow Sinner’s lead and double down on her Fed Cup success with a major singles title of her own.
On the men’s side, there are many possible contenders, but the obvious candidate to come closest to matching Sinner is Lorenzo Musetti. Ever since he won the first two sets against Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2021, Musetti has been earmarked as a possible superstar, not least because he possesses a single-handed backhand to compare with the best in the sport, namely those of Federer and Henin. He reached the Wimbledon semifinal in 2024 but will hope to do even better in 2025, perhaps on the clay at Roland Garros, which is the surface that most naturally suits his game.
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The Real Return of Emma Raducanu
Some eyebrows were raised when Emma Raducanu announced that she was giving herself a “pat on the back” for her achievements in 2024, when those achievements seemed to add up to so little, at least in comparison with her still-stunning US Open win in 2021.
Nevertheless, 2024 did represent progress of a kind for the young Briton, who has been blighted by injuries and lack of form since her New York fairytale. She performed extremely well for Great Britain in the Fed Cup as they reached the last four and on the WTA Tour she managed to appear at many more tournaments than she had in either 2022 or 2023.
Four years on from her Major triumph, Raducanu must prove in 2025 that she is finally sufficiently fit and firing to return to something like the form she showed in New York in 2021. If she does, she can begin to ascend the women’s rankings and perhaps even go deep in another Slam. But if she cannot do so, then that shock US Open triumph may well remain her only major win.
Main Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea – USA TODAY Sports
