CLT Australian Open Preview
The ATP Insider Returns with five key story lines to follow in the new year
New Year, New Tour?
I’m back. It’s been a rejuvenating hiatus since the U.S. Open and we’ve got a lot to catch up on. Novak won the World Tour Finals, Rafa came back and then got injured again, the tours might both be dissolving(?), Nick Kyrgios started a podcast, the ATP redesigned its website and the interface is somehow even worse than before.
Sadly, I won’t be replicating last year’s more comprehensive men’s preview. Nor will I be engaging in Dialectical Prognostication in any form. Instead, I’ll be brief on the predictions front: Novak Djokovic, mystic fascist ruler of our game, is going to win the Australian Open. He always wins the Australian Open, this is an immutable, material fact.
So, instead of focusing on predictions, I’ll be going full Sports Media Personality and devoting myself to Narratives. Here are my four leftist tennis stories to track in the Aussie and beyond.
Ben Shelton’s Anglophone Splits
Ben Shelton is an American Tennis Player. He hits the ball HARD. He doesn’t like BACKHANDS. He also seems to only win matches in countries where English is spoken. Last year, 15 of Shelton’s 26 tour level wins came in Canada, the UK, and the United States. And, until a late season title run at the ATP 500 in Tokyo (five of his non-Anglophone nation wins) and a quarter final performance at the Shanghai Masters (another three wins), Shelton hadn’t won multiple matches in any non-grand slam event1. It was an electric, but strange breakout season for the young, extremely cringe, American.
So, what can we expect from Shelton in 2024? Will it be leftist?
I think Shelton, in acelertionist fashion, will move to more fully polarize his results. Expect impressive showings in Australia, at Wimbledon, and at Flushing Meadows. He’s dominate the American hardcourt swing, too. Howevever, he will not win any matches on clay or in countries where English is not the most common spoken languagae. I could even see him taking a reverse Rafa approach and getting injured for a large bulk of claycourt season, only to return fresh for the grass.
Shelton is, ultimately, not leftist, but not traditionally conservative, either. His politics, I think, can be best described by podcasts that are consumed in short clips on Tik Tok and YouTube. He’s tennis Nelk.
The ATP’s New Lost Generation
The ATP tour is getting younger. This year I don’t just expect big results from Alcaraz, Rune, Shelton and Sinner, but I believe we’ll see breakouts from Fils, Draper, Mensik, and Prizmic. However, while the under-25 chort continues to impress, the once promising NexGen that includes Rublev, Zverev, Medvedev, Tsitsipas, and Kyrgios sits in limbo.
While not long ago it seemed like these guys would perenially contend for (and win) slams, they are instead occupying a tennis purgatory with really bad vibes. Both in Australia, and 2024 in general, I’m selling hard on this group. Not becuase of injuries, personal conduct, depression, or political incoherence, but because I believe a deeper, far more powerful energy is working against these very poorly dressed tennis players.
By starting a podcast and an OnlyFans, Nick Kyrgios has unleashed an entropic force that will shatter the status quo for his peers in the top ten. These guys were already barely keeping it together—Rublev can’t stop sad boi posting, Tsitsipas is genuinely delusional, Zverev and Medvedev cannot contain their mutual hatred. It’s simply impossible for this whole thing to endure. My longterm outlook here is that at least one member of this group will, by the end of 2024, experience an FAA esque collapse and fall out of the top 25. More immediately, none of them make it beyond the quarters in Australia (and Kyrgios, still on injury hiatus, may never return).
A New (Italian) Men’s Grand Slam Champion
Keeping this one short. Leftist Icon Jannik Sinner, whose Italian-ness I have never questioned, will win a Grand Slam in 2024.
The End of an Era
Finally, the least immediate, but most broadly influential topic…The Future. 2024, already, feels like a conclusion. There’s been talk of an ATP and WTA merger, a new (smaller) tour, and a Saudi buy-in to avoid a LIV Golf situation. At the year’s end (or sooner) Rafa Nadal will be done, permanently, on the court. Novak, while he continues to dominate, cannot forever be immune to time. I struggle to imagine sitting here at the start of 2026 (or even 2025) with Nole still atop the men’s game.
Professional Tennis, in its stars, loctions, presentation, and structure has, for quite a while, looked roughly the same. That seems to be changing. In this new season, as things shift, I’m most curious about who seems primed to capitalize on this change at all levels of the game. While I’m not sure if our sport can escape the grip of private equity, do right by lower ranked playesr, or avoid the influence of repressive, censorious governments, we can’t be doing worse than Major League Pickleball.
He did make the third round at the Cagliari Challenger, but I’m only counting tour level results here.
Sinner prophecy foretold and fulfilled
"acelertionist" — is that a word?