2023 Australian Grand Slam, Women’s Tennis Is Wide Open

January 26, 2023,

With Serena Williams possibly moving away from tennis, it is becoming far more difficult to tell where today’s professional women’s tennis is moving.

Who is the long-term super star and front runner of tomorrow?

The 2023 Australian Open, thus far, has not answered that question.

Maybe that is a good thing.

Coming into the tournament, Poland’s Iga Swiatek was the odds on favorite.

Given her resume, you can see why.

Iga is currently ranked world No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

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Ms. Świątek is a three-time major singles champion, having won the French Open in 2020 and 2022 and the US Open in 2022. She is the first player representing Poland to win a major singles title.

She has won a total of 11 WTA Tour-level titles.

Very impressive.

There’s more.

During her French Open title run in 2020, Ms. Świątek did not lose more than five games in any singles match.

She entered the top ten of the WTA rankings for the first time in May 2021 after winning the Italian Open. Following back-to-back WTA 1000 titles in 2022 at Qatar and Indian Wells, Świątek reached a career-high ranking of No. 2 on 21 March 2022.

When the then number one player Ash Barty retired after winning the 2022 Australian Open title, Iga naturally stepped into the position and has held on ever since.

So, when she faced the big serving Elena Rybakina in the fourth round, and was taken out in two sets 4-6, 4-6, while it wasn’t a shock, it just wasn’t expected.

In this current Serena-less climate, we don’t know what to expect.

Elena moved on to the semi-finals against the legendary Victoria Azarenka.

Elena is a Kazakhstani professional tennis player.

She is the reigning champion at Wimbledon and the first Kazakhstani player to win a title at a major.

Kazakhstan is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe.

It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, with a coastline along the Caspian Sea.

So many countries within arm’s length.

Its capital is Astana.

Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country, the largest and northernmost Muslim-majority country by land area, and the ninth-largest country in the world.

Did you know that?

By land, the 9^th largest country in the world. Yes, that bears repeating.

It has a population of 19 million people, and one of the lowest population densities in the world, at fewer than 15 people per square mile.

Intriguing.

Before this major tournament began, few were probably thinking of Elena to make it to the semi-finals and yet here she is.

Against Victoria Azarenka.

Victória is a Belarusian professional tennis player.

She is a former world No. 1 in singles, having claimed the top ranking for the first time on January 30, 2012.

She was the year-end No. 1 in 2012 and has held the top ranking for a combined total of 51 weeks. That was also a year of the Olympics in England. Seems so long ago. How time flies.

Think about it. She was number one for 51 weeks and that was a time period when Serena Williams was still a force.

In fact, Victoria’s most notable rivalry is against Serena Williams. They have met 23 times, including eleven times in Grand Slams, with Serena Williams leading their head-to-head 18–5, 10–1 in Grand Slams, and 5–4 in finals.

5-4 is razor thin, against arguably the best professional female tennis player in history.

Ms. Azarenka has won 21 WTA singles titles, including two Grand Slam singles titles at the 2012 and 2013 Australian Open, becoming the first Belarusian player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam tournament singles title.

She is also a three-time major finalist at the US Open, finishing runner-up to Serena Williams in both 2012 and 2013 and to Naomi Osaka in 2020.

In singles she also won six Premier Mandatory tournaments, four Premier 5 tournaments, and the singles bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

She was the runner-up at the 2011 WTA Finals to Petra Kvitová, reached three other Grand Slam singles semifinals (Wimbledon in 2011 and 2012 and the French Open in 2013), and had nine other major quarterfinal appearances.

She finished with a year-end top 10 singles ranking for five consecutive years between 2009 and 2013.

Given those credentials, the reason that Victoria may have been overlooked coming into the tournament was because, if you examine her resume closely, so much of her accomplishments were deep in the past.

It is wonderful to see her resurgence.

Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe.

It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest.

Covering an area of 207,600 square 80,200 square miles with a population of 9.2 million, Belarus is the 13th-largest and the 20th-most populous country in Europe.

So, two of the semi-finalist at the 2023 Australian Open hail from regions of the world that most people probably don’t not know much about.

They are making noise right now.

As far as the future of women’s tennis, it isn’t landlocked in any way.

Once Serena’s reign began to wane, Ash Barty appeared to be the next heir apparent but her sudden, and for some, unexpected retirement, served things wide open.

America’s Jessica Pegula, the world’s current number three, was expected to make her first break through, after reaching the quarter finals of a Grand Slam for the 5^th time but quietly fell to Victoria Azarenka in the quarters.

Though she is only 18, the world is still waiting for America’s Coco Gauff to surge to the next level.

Naomi Osaka is pregnant and waiting to re-emerge in 2024.

America’s Danielle Collins made the finals of the 2022 Australian Open but was taken out in the third round by Elena Rybakina during the 2023 Australian Open.

So, it is wide open.