The Stat Sheet: First-week success & Melbourne momentum

Imagine if the Super Bowl was played just two weeks into the season. Or if male professional golfers had to tee it up at the Masters with only a couple of warm-up tournaments under their belts.

It may seem unfathomable, but that’s actually the situation tennis players on the ATP and WTA tours find their selves in with the Australian Open getting underway on Jan. 14.

It can be beneficial to ride the momentum of a good start in the first week of the season on through Melbourne, with some players this decade winning early and finishing up January with a major title in tow.

This year, Roger Federer—the two-time defending champion at the Australian Open—will be looking to repeat his feat from last year of helping Switzerland win the Hopman Cup and following that up with success in Melbourne.

Last year, Federer had some unexpected company among the first-week-to-Aussie-glory crew as Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic won in Doha. They actually won the week after, too, and extended their streak through the Australian Open, becoming the first men’s team this millennium to capture three titles in January.

Pavic maintained his stellar form through the month by actually doubling up at the Australian, as he and Gabriela Dabrowski won the mixed event.

This decade, Li Na accomplished the task in 2014 by winning Shenzhen, then her second career major title. Stan Wawrinka also triumphed in Week 1 that year in Chennai, then shook up the tennis world by claiming his first Grand Slam shortly afterward.

Surprisingly, Open-Era Aussie title leaders Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams have only accomplished this once between them in the 2010s, when Djokovic won in Doha in 2016 before taking his sixth title in Melbourne.

Those two, though, have obviously proven they know how to prepare for the year’s first major.

It’s a tough task, one that Karolina Pliskova, Roberto Bautista Agut, Julia Goerges, Kei Nishikori and the other 2019 first-week winners will dream to pull off.

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