The 2025 Australian Open begins on January 12 in Melbourne, and the draws for the men’s and women’s singles are intriguing – and have produced some blockbuster first-round matches.

The athleteTennis writers Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare analyze the match-ups and offer some of their tips for the best matches of the opening days.

---

What awaits the defending champions – and the best players in the world?

They didn’t take much advantage of this draw.

Jannik Sinner shouldn’t have too much trouble with Chile’s Nicolas Jarry, but Jarry can be incredibly good and last year he played in the top 10 for a while.

From mid-February to mid-May, Jarry reached a final in Buenos Aires, a quarterfinal in Miami and another final in Rome. He is a big man with a big serve and a bigger forehand. When he puts those two together, he can be a handful.

However, he did little in the second half of the year. Sinner should do it all well, especially on a hard court.

Until the business end of the tournament, life afterward should be reasonably pleasant. Holger Rune, who is still a mystery at this point, is the top seed in Sinner’s district; Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic would only get through in the final.

Aryna Sabalenka suffered the same fate as Coco Gauff and attracted a former Grand Slam winner to her. She will play Sloane Stephens in the first round.

At this point, Stephens is at his best on clay. It is the surface that she speaks about most passionately. She may also have some scar tissue from last year, when she had a golden opportunity to take a one-set lead against Anna Kalinskaya in the second week before losing the next two.

Beyond Stephens, there is a fair bit of quality lurking in Sabalenka’s surroundings of the draw. Don’t sleep on Linda Noskova, who sent Iga Swiatek home from Melbourne last year, or Mirra Andreeva, who fears no one, or Diana Shnaider, perhaps the most improved player of the last 12 months. And if both reach the quarterfinals, Sabalenka will face a much-improved Zheng Qinwen in the 2024 final.

A nightmare quarter for Gauff – or just a tribute to the WTA depth?

If Gauff was looking for an easy way into the second week – as if such a thing existed – then she didn’t understand it.

For her first round match in Sofia Kenin she drew a Grand Slam winner. Not just any Grand Slam, because Kenin won it five years ago – and not just any Grand Slam champion, because Gauff met Kenin at Wimbledon in 2023 and Kenin won in three sets.

Sure, it’s been five years since Kenin’s triumph in Melbourne and she’s largely been a shadow of her tennis self post-pandemic, but for the past few months she’s been winning matches at most of the tournaments she enters. If she can pull through for the game, which is no guarantee given the way Gauff has been playing lately, it could be a long afternoon or evening for the No. 3 seed.

Kenin might not be the only early speed bump for Gauff if she gets over it. There is no lack of quality in their quarter of the draw. Naomi Osaka, Jelena Ostapenko and Karolina Muchova are all there. She wouldn’t face either of them until the fourth round, and that part of the tournament is still ages away at this point. This is not the time for predictions.

Instead, it speaks to the overall depth of the WTA that there are so many potential problems in the first week for so many good players with a track record. In a group of 16 players, there are four Grand Slam winners (Gauff, Kenin, Osaka, Ostapenko), two Grand Slam finalists (Muchova and Leylah Fernandez) and one Olympic champion (Belinda Bencic).

USA, USA, USA, U…S…A?

Draw day at the Australian Open was not a great day for American tennis fans. Everywhere you looked, Americans were focused on cannibalizing each other.

Gauff and Kenin are just the beginning. Are you comfortable with US Open semifinalist Emma Navarro? She has Peyton Stearns, the former NCAA champion and a tough opponent, at the helm. Are you excited to see Ben Shelton’s fast start in 2025? He gets to take on Brandon Nakashima. Madison Keys takes on Ann Li.

Taylor Fritz enters the tournament with the highest placement of his career. He is seeded number 4. He has a fellow Californian in the first round – Jenson Brooksby, who won Grand Slam matches before being suspended for missing drug tests and wrist surgery. Along with Brooksby, Fritz is in the same quarter of the draw as Frances Tiafoe, Shelton and Nakashima.

The glass-half-full view is that the USA has so much depth right now, with so many players in both the men’s and women’s tournaments, that it is inevitable that they will clash. Since Shelton is seeded number 21, he had to face a top 8 player in the fourth round anyway.

If there was a showdown with Fritz, he would probably be okay with it. He is most likely better than Sinner, Alcaraz or Djokovic.

—Matthew Futterman

Matt Futterman’s first-round games to watch:

Caroline Garcia vs. Naomi Osaka
Nick Kyrgios vs Jacob Fearnley
Emma Navarro (8) vs. Peyton Stearns
Joao Fonseca (Q) vs. Andrey Rublev (9)

---

Novak Djokovic can still overtake the time, but he cannot escape a seeded player

With Sinner and Alcaraz in the same half of the draw at the last three Slams, Novak Djokovic found himself in glorious isolation. This luck had to end at some point, but in the end it was less a matter of chance and more of something that worked out as planned.

Djokovic is not only in the same half as Alcaraz, but in the same quarter, which is due to his relatively low ranking at No. 7. This opens up the mouthwatering prospect of a last eight clash between two of the three tournament favorites.

Djokovic is no stranger to a good draw, and his first few games fit that pattern. He starts against American wildcard Nishesh Basavareddy before facing either a qualifier or Russian world number 99 Pavel Kotov in the second round.

It’s expected to get much tougher from there, with a likely third-round match against the mercurial No. 26 seed Tomas Machac or the hard-serving Reilly Opelka, who unseated Djokovic in Brisbane last week. The ten-time Australian Open winner would then face another Czech, Jiri Lehecka, or three-time major semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov.

If Djokovic wants to advance to the final against Sinner, he may have to do it in a tougher way than he is sometimes used to. His new coach Andy Murray will have ideas.

The Strange Story of Seed #2

How much of an advantage is being the No. 2 seed compared to a No. 3 or No. 4 seed? The answer can vary wildly from major to major, but in this year’s draw Alexander Zverev and Iga Swiatek have nabbed some pretty inviting quarters.

However, their potential opponents may find more to divide than to unite them. Swiatek may have been eliminated in the third round of the Australian Open last year, but she still has the fear factor of a five-time Grand Slam champion and long-time world No. 1. She also looked pretty intimidating at the United Cup in the last week or so, leading Coco Gauff with breaks in both sets in a seemingly straightforward 6-4, 6-4 defeat that was anything but a success.

Zverev, the two-time finalist who has yet to make it over the finish line, could have a number of players who see themselves as predator rather than prey taking an opportunity in this quarter. Without Alcaraz or Djokovic, players like Tommy Paul, Arthur Fils and Ugo Humbert will think a semi-final spot could be theirs.

At first glance, Zverev’s number 2 seeding seems a little deceptive – it’s up to him to show that it is justified.

The Curse of the Grand Slam Floater

One day Naomi Osaka’s luck in the Grand Slam draw will change, but Thursday wasn’t that day.

The unseeded four-time Grand Slam champion drew against also unseeded former world No. 4 Caroline Garcia in the first round before a likely second-round clash with No. 20 seed and former French Open runner-up Karolina Muchova. Osaka and Muchova met at the same stage of the US Open in August, when Osaka had already defeated 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in the first round.

Osaka had a match point at the other two majors in 2024, but lost at the French Open to the almost unbeatable Swiatek and then lost to now world No. 8 Emma Navarro at Wimbledon – both eliminations came in the second round.

In New York, Osaka and Muchova were both floaters – the kind of unseeded player one of the top 32 names in the draw would want to avoid. They have since parted ways. Muchova used her win over Osaka as a springboard to the US Open semifinals, and Osaka would love to turn the tables and do something similar here – especially because it may just be that kind of run that qualifies her for the French Open.

Should she get past Garcia and Muchova, another dangerous player could be waiting for her – former Olympic champion Belinda Bencic, who is unseeded after recently returning from giving birth to her first child. Assuming Bencic gets past another dark horse, Ostapenko, in the first round.

The prize for the winner of this small group of potentially lethal players is a scheduled fourth round against Gauff. Considering how the American is playing right now, that wouldn’t be much of a reward at all.

—Charlie Eccleshare

Charlie Eccleshare’s first round games to watch:

Belinda Bencic vs. Jelena Ostapenko (16)
Gael Monfils vs. Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (30)
Marie Bouzkova vs. Mirra Andreeva (14)
Stefanos Tsitsipas (11) against Alex Michelsen

And… James Hansen’s first round bonus games to watch:

Yulia Putintseva (24) against Elina Avanesyan
Alexei Popyrin (25) against Corentin Moutet

---

Australian Open 2025: Women’s singles draw

Australian Open 2025: Men’s singles draw

Let us know in the comments what matchups you’re looking out for.

(Top photos of Novak Djokovic and Coco Gauff: Getty Images)