Large's Guide to the Early Rounds of the Aussie Open

If you're like me, the Australian Open shocks the shit out of you every January. I'm just not ready for Grand Slam tennis at this point in the year. But look, never fear, cause this morning while I was watching the Colts/Bolts, I took a bleary-eyed look at the draw and compiled the first thoughts that came to my mind. Don't say I never did anything for you.



Men’s Draw
The most interesting first-round men’s matches down in Melbourne are in the second quarter of the draw - Dmitri Tursonov v. Xavier Malisse, Nicolas Kiefer v. Juan Carlos Ferrero, and the best first-round match of the tournament, Aussie by way of Cyprus Marcos Baghdatis, a 2006 finalist, facing the 2002 champion Thomas Johansson. The winner of that match gets no relief in the second round, where he likely will face the 2005 Aussie champ, Mr. Combustible Marat Safin. In the top quarter of the draw (a.k.a Federer’s Lair), ole Rog is coming off a stomach virus and has a potential showdown with the always entertaining and ever pesky Fabrice Santoro in the second round. Not that this will require Federer to even try very hard really, but it’s interesting nevertheless. Another possible second-round meeting of notables in Fed’s section of the draw is Ivan Ljubicic and Sebastien Grosjean. The winner of that likely would face James Blake in the third round, but the Blake-inator doesn’t have the easiest path to that match – his first-round opponent is Chilean Nicolas Massu, who has beaten Blake in their only two matches on tour.



Women’s Draw
Nearly all the female firepower is in the top half of the women’s draw, and in the earlygoing figure that most of the attention will be soaked up by the top quarter, where reside Mmes. Henin, Sharapova, Dementieva, the fiery Israeli Shahar Peer, and the resurgent tennis mom, Lindsay Davenport. In fact, in my memory it’s been a while since there’s been a second-round match in a women’s Grand Slam draw as compelling as the potential Sharapova/Davenport showdown. Is Lindsay far enough along in her comeback to handle the leggy supermodel/gruntmaster? It’s hard to imagine, but then again, Lindsay has surprised me before, and she’s won three tournaments since returning to the pro circuit last summer on a whim. The second quarter of the women’s draw is also jam-packed with boldface names – Jankovic, Mauresmo, Vaidisova and Serena (who's playing as I write). No really sexy matches there, however, until the round of 16. One final note – in the third quarter of the draw, Venus has about as clean a trip to the semis as she could have hoped for.

(If you’re looking for a much more detailed exploration of the draw by a considerably more able handicapper than myself, check out our own Mr. Deep Tennis himself, Steve Tignor’s close-reading over at Tennis.com).