How will you remember Thursday, January 18, 2024, as a tennis fan?
Will you remember it for all the fifth-set tiebreakers in men’s matches, with two of them — involving Alexander Zverev and Casper Ruud, both former major finalists — going on at the same time?
Will you remember this day for Iga Swiatek’s dramatic and emotional comeback against Danielle Collins, a player who later announced she would retire at the end of the 2024 season?
Will you remember January 18, 2024, as the day when so many different women’s seeds lost that only four of the top 10 seeds remained before the third round even began?
Will you remember this day for the thrilling Max Purcell-Casper Ruud match, which was exceptionally well played?
Will you remember this day for Victoria Azarenka prevailing over Clara Tauson in a battle of older age versus youth?
Will you remember January 18, 2024, for the shotmaking delights of Carlos Alcaraz and Lorenzo Sonego, who kept cracking the ball and repeatedly delivered highlight-reel entertainment?
Will you remember this day for Daniil Medvedev’s five-set escape after being down two sets, in a match which ended well past 3 a.m. local time?
Will you remember this day for the fact that very few matches went straight sets, and that wave after wave of matches from afternoon until night provided late-stage tension in a number of different contexts?
Will you remember this day for the 22-20 match tiebreaker in which Anna Blinkova knocked out 2023 Australian Open runner-up and 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in a nerve-soaked testimony to the difficulty of elite-level tennis on a global stage?
Will you remember this day for any of those things? There’s no wrong answer. Yet, the larger point of this piece is to simply point out that ALL those things happened on the same day of play. It was a tennis buffet of nearly 17 hours in Australia which no one on site in Melbourne will ever forget.
We are reminded how great tennis is when it sings. We forget how ugly the sport can be off the court, and how poorly this sport is governed and administered by executives and people in positions of influence. When the game itself unfolds this dramatically and beautifully, we are reassured that no matter how much the business of tennis might stain itself, the actual sport will still resonate.
As someone once said, the play’s the thing.
Tennis with an Accent 