Mediocre American tennis players tear at the Australian Open. What were they fed?

The performance of the US representatives at the Australian Open Grand Slam tournament this year is simply amazing. Three Americans will play in the quarterfinals at once, and at least one of them is guaranteed to make it to the semifinals.

Surprisingly, most of the surprise heroes of the tournament are outside the top 30 ATP rankings and have no major achievements.

Where did these Americans come from?

The current Australian Open has already become one of the most sensational in a decade. Many favorites finished the fight in the early stages in both the women’s and men’s brackets. Moreover, not only individual athletes, but also entire nations are surprised. First of all, we are talking about the United States, three representatives of which have already made it to the quarterfinals of the tournament. Given that two of them will play each other, America will be represented in the semi-final with one hundred percent probability.

In general, the last time three Americans played in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open exactly 23 years ago. Then it was Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Chris Woodruff. The first two are absolute tennis legends. By the way, Agassi then played in the final with our Yevgeny Kafelnikov and won a difficult victory in four sets. And now, after more than two decades, the Americans are again massively tearing apart rivals. Now it’s Sebastian Korda, Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul.

Moreover, it cannot be said that they are players with the prefix “top” at the moment. On the contrary, their high results look like a sensation, because Korda, Paul and Shelton are, respectively, on the 31st, 35th and 89th places in the world rankings. If we dig deeper, the trend with the upcoming dominance of American tennis becomes even more obvious. In the third round, there were eight tennis players representing the United States at once. That is, every fourth player at this stage has an American passport. This proportion was preserved in the ⅛ final

Photo: © Darrian Traynor / Stringer / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

An isolated case or a new force in world tennis

But most importantly, the vast majority of these Americans are 25 or younger. That is, they are not even in the middle of the road, but are just getting ready to reach the peak of their careers. It is terrible to imagine what will happen, when and if they succeed. The Americans could, in theory, have their own Grand Slam semi-finals on a regular basis. They are brash, well-trained and superbly prepared physically.

The first two seeded Australian Open 2023, Rafael Nadal and Kasper Ruud, were eliminated from the tournament by American tennis players Mackenzie McDonald and Jenson Brooksby, respectively. Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedva was knocked out of the Australian Open by another American, Sebastian Korda, and German Alexander Zverev, Michael Mo. There is probably a very good diet in America that allows you to achieve such results.

But seriously speaking, it is quite obvious that the American training system in men’s tennis worked perfectly. And this is not just an isolated case when the stars converged. When you have eight people playing in the third round and three tennis players in the quarterfinals, this cannot be called an accident. So very soon quantity will gradually turn into quality. It’s nice that the second after the Americans in terms of representation in the ¼ finals are the Russians. Karen Khachanov and Andrei Rublev will try to prove that Russia is capable of confronting the United States at the highest level. All the more so for Khachanov to play just with Korda.