Australian Open storylines: Alcaraz and Sinner’s evolution, WTA stars chasing rivals’ strengths

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What is the next phase of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s rivalry?

Will the women’s draw demonstrate the difference between consistency and clutchness?

Will unseeded players and up-and-comers have a bigger say than usual?

And is politics going to take over the tournament?

The 2026 Australian Open promises to be a cracker. Here, The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, chart some of the key storylines to follow over the next fortnight.

In pursuit of the career Grand Slam, how will Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Świątek go?

Career Grand Slams are unsurprisingly rare in tennis. On the men’s side, no one has done it since Novak Djokovic finally won the French Open in 2016. Maria Sharapova was the last woman to pull off the feat, in 2012.

At this year’s Australian Open, two players have the chance to complete the set of all four majors. Carlos Alcaraz is having his second go, having gotten to three out of four titles in 2024, when he won his first French Open title. If he does it this year (or the next one) he will become the youngest man in history to have won all four Grand Slams. He’s so invested, that late last year he said in a news conference that he would take one title for 2026 over two, if that one were to arrive in Melbourne. When asked if he would make a similar deal but over three this week, he had to think a little harder.

For Iga Świątek, who won Wimbledon last year to move to three out of four, it’s the first crack. Neither of them has an outstanding record in Australia, and both have formidable obstacles in their way.

Świątek is keeping things as similar to any other Grand Slam as they can be — a very different approach to Alcaraz.

“Since the beginning of the year, there are many people coming to me and talking to me about it. I’m really just focusing on, like, day-by-day work. This is how it’s always been for me. This is how I actually was able to achieve the success that I already have, just focusing really on grinding, match by match,” she said during a news conference.

— Matt Futterman

How will the WTA Tour’s rivals harness each other’s strengths?

The two best women’s players in the world come into the Australian Open with two very different challenges in pursuit of the same goal, and the way they will face them affects the tournament’s other contenders.

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka has no trouble reaching finals, but she can find it difficult to play her best tennis when she does. In 2025, she made nine finals and lost five; in Grand Slams overall, she is 4-3.

World No. 2 Świątek made six fewer finals than her nearest rival in 2025, and she has got to two finals in the past 10 majors, compared to Sabalenka’s six from nine. But she won two of her three finals across the board last year, and she has won all six of her Grand Slam finals. Overall, she is 25-5 when a title is on the line, compared to 22-19 for Sabalenka.

Where Sabalenka is the master of getting to finals, Świątek remains the master of winning them — and the way the draw has come out, they are more likely to need the other’s skill to get what they want. Where Sabalenka’s draw looks fairly kind on paper, Świątek is slated to face Naomi Osaka, Elena Rybakina and Amanda Anisimova in consecutive rounds before the final. The former was within a point of defeating Świątek at the French Open two years ago when she was close to unbeatable, while the latter two both beat her in their most recent meetings.

Were one of those three to eliminate Świątek, they would immediately look well set to win the title themselves, with Osaka a two-time Australian champion, WTA Tour Finals champion Rybakina ominous on hard courts since last fall, and Anisimova similarly formidable on the surface.

— Charlie Eccleshare

How will American stars prove the responses to adversity they have designed?

A clutch of top Americans on the men’s and women’s side have been entering Grand Slams as serious contenders — and in the case of Coco Gauff, lifting the trophy twice — for a while now. But it’s been a while since so many of them entered a Grand Slam dealing with a healthy dose of adversity.

Taylor Fritz finished last year looking closer than ever — but still so far — from the top two. He is managing what he has described as chronic tendonitis in his knee, which curtailed his offseason as far as practice goes.

Tommy Paul has been fighting injuries since the French Open. He could use another decent run at a major to get his ranking back to where it’s been the last couple years, because he’s barely in the top 20 right now.

Frances Tiafoe went out in the third round of last year’s U.S. Open and barely played the rest of the season. By the time the tournament starts, he will be outside the top 30.

Ben Shelton’s shoulder, and his form since returning from that nightmare injury at the U.S. Open has left a question mark hanging over his future. It may all turn out fine, but the joint is one of a few that tennis players just need to be healthy.

And then there is Gauff, the 21-year-old, two-time Grand Slam champion who already feels like a veteran and who is retooling her serve and forehand in real time. She wins matches she ought to lose like just about no one else, but a lot of those matches at times feels like they are heading for the abyss.

All this might be fodder for inspiration. It also might make for some first-week exits. It’s been a good run for American tennis, especially the women, who make up 40 percent of the top 10 and who have been a presence in the past five Grand Slam finals, including Madison Keys’ wonderful triumph of last year.

Keeping it rolling in Melbourne might take some doing — and some super-talented physiotherapists. And Keys, the defending champion with arguably the most on the line, said in her news conference Friday that she has figured out how to keep things in perspective.

“Even though I’ve been on tour for a long time, this is also still my first experience,” she said of defending a major title.

“I’m really trying to just kind of embrace that and take it in and soak it in, because I feel like so often we look back and we regret that, even in the hard moments that were stressful and pressure and all that, we didn’t find all the fun parts of it.”

— Matt Futterman

How will Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s duopoly evolve?

Last year, adjustments in the wake of losses in finals defined the rivalry between Alcaraz and Sinner, who have split the past eight Grand Slams.

When Sinner out-served Alcaraz in a clinical performance at Wimbledon, the Spaniard went on a 15-day training camp designed to overcome his great rival. He evolved his own serve and focused on producing repeatable quality in matches. A couple of months later, he delivered the most clinical of U.S. Open wins, dropping just a single set — to Sinner in the final.

When it was over, Sinner said in a news conference that he needed to be less predictable, especially against Alcaraz. He duly won the ATP Tour Finals, beating Alcaraz in the final, to cap a hugely successful fall in which he was trying more drop shots and lobs than before.

So, what will be the main frontier on which this great rivalry is fought at the Australian Open? Their meetings, previously characterized by implausible shotmaking and points of mind-bending acrobatics, have more and more become about serve and return as they optimize their playstyles.

Alcaraz’s serve was much improved at the U.S. Open, and he has been tweaking the shot again. “For me, the serve is something that I really want to be better every year, in every tournament,” he said in a news conference Friday. “I’m just putting constant work on the serve.

“Now with this movement on the serve, I just feel really, really comfortable, smooth, really calm and peaceful rhythm, which I think it helps me a lot.”

Sinner, meanwhile, said in a news conference Friday that during the offseason, “We worked a lot on trying to make the transition to the net. The serve, we changed a couple of things.”

“The beauty of a rivalry like Sinner and Alcaraz is that they make each other better,” said Boris Becker, a two-time Australian Open champion and part of TNT Sports’ coverage for this year’s event, in a virtual news conference Thursday.

The bad news for everybody else is that this battle of marginal gains also sees Alcaraz and Sinner improve on a more general level, fueling their ascent further and further away from the rest of the field.

— Charlie Eccleshare

What will 2025’s emerging talents learn from another Grand Slam?

Last year was a breakout season for several promising newcomers on the men’s and women’s tour.

Joāo Fonseca wowed the Australian Open crowds with his opening-round demolition of Andrey Rublev, which started a year in which he rose up the rankings to around where Carlos Alcaraz and Roger Federer finished their first full years on tour. Learner Tien had a similar year, which started with his upset win over Daniil Medvedev in the early hours of the Melbourne morning.

Victoria Mboko blasted to a WTA 1000 title at the Canadian Open. Alexandra Eala journeyed to the semifinals of the Miami Open, the same tournament where Jakub Menşík beat Novak Djokovic for the title. Tereza Valentová, Iva Jović and Janice Tjen converted relentless winning on the World Tennis Tour to bona fide WTA Tour success.

What else do all those up-and-comers have in common, Tien aside? None of them have made the second week of a Grand Slam.

Tennis has a history of eating its young. So this is hardly a put-up-or-shut-up moment for these promising talents. That said, the sport also thrives on and derives energy from new faces, especially when they have big results on big stages. Witness Loïs Boisson, who has missed out on Melbourne due to injury, roaring to the semifinals of the French Open last year.

Can that happen at this Australian Open? The Brazilians will be out in force for Fonseca. Eala should get lots of support at what is the Grand Slam of the Asia-Pacific region. Mboko warmed up for her first appearance in Melbourne by beating defending champion Keys, on her way to the final of the Adelaide International.

It’s been a minute since a Grand Slam had a teen go on a serious run. Are the kids ready for prime time?

— Matt Futterman

And will the player pressure on the Grand Slams go from simmering to something more?

It wouldn’t be a Grand Slam without behind-the-scenes machinations, and at the Australian Open, the group of leading players who last year sent letters to the majors demanding change will be plotting their next move.

That group, which includes Sabalenka, Gauff, Świątek, Alcaraz and Sinner, are pushing for three main reforms: for prize money to be a greater proportion of tournament revenues for players at all levels, for greater consultation on tournament matters and for additional contributions to player welfare.

The Grand Slams generally pay around 16 to 20 percent of their revenues in prize money, but the players argue that figure should reach 22 percent by 2030, in line with joint ATP and WTA Tour events and closer, but not close, to the NFL, MLB and NBA, where players receive closer to 50 percent. This year’s Australian Open prize money is $111.5 million AUD ($75 million USD). That figure is 16 percent of Tennis Australia’s $465.8 million income in 2025 up to September, but that revenue includes streams other than the Australian Open.

A person briefed on the players’ plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships in tennis, said that while grateful for the headline increase in prize money and distributions further down the pyramid, they expected that the players involved would likely have been disappointed that their three principal demands of the Australian Open and other Grand Slams had in their eyes been largely ignored.

The person said a meeting was planned for Saturday between some of the players and their agents to discuss how they approach the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open over the coming months, as the year’s three remaining Slams begin to put their prize money packages together.

The four Grand Slams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The percentage is still, of revenue comparison, is still not where we would like it,” Gauff said in a news conference Friday. “I think there’s still further conversations that have to be had, not just with the Australian Open but with all the slams.

“From my last update, the collective feeling is that, yes, there’s been progress, but I still think it’s not where we would like to see it. We are grateful for the progress that has been made.

“I would imagine that we would continue to have those conversations and maybe more pressure (will be) applied with, like, especially the top-10 (group).”

Alexander Zverev, who was in the meeting with Grand Slam representatives at Wimbledon last year, said: “I don’t really feel like there’s any progress, to be honest.”

Keys was more upbeat, adding in her news conference: “I think that it has been the most productive conversations that we’ve ever had, which leads me to be carefully optimistic, I think, for the future.

“But I really think it’s in everyone’s best interest to continue to be really good partners to each other. We all need each other. We all want to try to do whatever we can to support each other.

“I’m, like I said, cautiously optimistic.”

The next few months should indicate whether that optimism is well placed.

— Charlie Eccleshare

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