{"id":78025,"date":"2025-01-13T14:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T19:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=78025"},"modified":"2025-01-13T14:02:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T19:02:35","slug":"australian-open-5-intra-country-matches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/01\/13\/australian-open-5-intra-country-matches\/","title":{"rendered":"All 5 Intra-Country Men’s Matches Scheduled for Day 3 at the Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five of the 64 first round men’s singles matches feature two players from the same country. All five of these will be contested on day three, the final day of the first round at the 2025 Australian Open. Four of the five contests will be re-matches of men who have played before at the ATP Tour level while French countrymen Gael Monfils and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard will meet for the first time at the professional level.<\/p>\n

Australian Open – Intra-country matches<\/h2>\n

Two All-American Matches<\/h4>\n

Four American men, all in their twenties, will see familiar faces across the net when their matches begin on Tuesday. 27-year-old Taylor Fritz<\/a>, the highest ranked American and fourth seed will square off against Jenson Brooksby. While Fritz is a high seed and a threat to win the entire event, Brooksby enters the tournament on a protected ranking as he returns to Grand Slam play for the first time in nearly two years.<\/p>\n

Despite his superior ranking and current form, Fritz actually lost his only tour level match to Brooksby when the men met in the 2021 US Open. 2021 was a long time ago in professional tennis, this match is a new day for both men.<\/p>\n

The other All-American match may be the tightest match of the day. 21st seed Ben Shelton faces 23-year old world #35 Brandon Nakashima. The American stars, only a year apart in age know each other since junior and college days. Shelton won each of their Tour level matchups, though they have never met in a Grand Slam event. Look for a great match between these emerging stars.<\/p>\n

The Italians and Serbs<\/h4>\n

Lorezo Musetti<\/a> and Matteo Arnaldi will meet in an all Italian affair on day three. Arnaldi carries a solid 39th ranking into Melbourne. At age 23 he has held a ranking inside the top 100 for a few years, but he is not as strong as countryman Musetti. At only 22-years-old, Musetti is now the 16th seed and holds a 2-0 career advantage over Arnaldi. Look for the pattern to continue in this match.<\/p>\n

The biggest spread in ranking status of these five matches is between Serbs Miomir Kecmanovic and Dusan Lajovic. Kecmanovic is now ranked 51st while the 34 year old Lajovic is ranked 80th in the world, but the Serbian has been ranked as high as world #23 and has knocked off his countryman in both of their prior meetings. He will need to call on his experience while facing Kecmanovic for the third time.<\/p>\n

First Time for Everything<\/h4>\n

In the only match of two countrymen who never faced each other before there will be a clash of generations of sorts. 38 year old French veteran Gael Monfils faces Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. Mpetshi Perricard is 17 years younger than his opponent, he is ranked 30th in the world which is 11 places ahead of Monfils. A veteran, Monfils will not be unduly concerned by playing a higher-ranked countryman in the first round. Their first professional match against each other should be very interesting.<\/p>\n

After two days of play without a match between players from the same nation, Tuesday is the day, five times. Many players don’t like to play friendly opponents from their own country, but nobody likes to lose an opening round match at a Grand Slam. Somebody has to lose, actually 5 somebodys. Time to play on day three at the Australian Open<\/p>\n

Main photo credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five of the 64 first round men’s singles matches feature two players from the same country. All five of these will be contested on day three, the final day of the first round at the 2025 Australian Open. Four of the five contests will be re-matches of men who have played before at the ATP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2763,"featured_media":75319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[16662,10956,2070,144,18755,8152,10332,17610,4359,347],"class_list":["post-78025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australian-open","tag-ben-shelton","tag-brandon-nakashima","tag-dusan-lajovic","tag-gael-monfils","tag-giovanni-mpetshi-perricard","tag-jensen-brooksby","tag-lorenzo-musetti","tag-matteo-arnaldi","tag-miomir-kecmanovic","tag-taylor-fritz"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78139,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78025\/revisions\/78139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}