Mumbai: Mention teen tennis sensations and your mind would probably swing to Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Steffi Graf or, if you happen to be from a younger crop, Maria Sharapova and Coco Gauff.
While we’re at the 2025 Australian Open, you could bring up Learner Tien, Jakub Mensik and Joao Fonseca. Also throw in Alex Michelsen.
The first three, each in their teens, are responsible for knocking out three top 10 players —Daniil Medvedev, Casper Ruud and Andrey Rublev, respectively — at Melbourne Park. This rare phenomenon has taken place just thrice in Grand Slams in five decades. Michelsen, 20, took down 2023 finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas in the first round.
American Michelsen will play Karen Khachanov on Saturday for a place in the fourth round, while his compatriot Tien, 19, faces Corentin Moutet. Czech Mensik, 19, was within touching distance of it on Friday, staring at two match points in the third set before losing a five-setter to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
Brazilian 18-year-old Fonseca too is out, but made quite a splash at this Australian Open along with his fellow band of teenage boys. For a long time in tennis, that band was largely female, with the Capriatis and Grafs and Sharapovas lighting up the Slam stage with their dash of youth and freshness. Now the boys appear to be pulling the strings.
The women’s tour, which for a large part of the last decade was a beehive of young achievers, currently has just one teen in the top 100 rankings: 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, who plays world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka in the fourth round. Over to the men, six players aged 21 or below have reached the third round of this Australian Open. Of the eight that competed in the 2024 Next Gen ATP Finals, six won their first-round matches. That includes the four giant-slayers of this week.
Tien, who like Fonseca came through the qualifying rounds, saw what his Next Gen members did and felt “inspired” in grabbing an even bigger fish — last year’s finalist Medvedev.
“Just trying to almost join them,” said the world No.121 after his win. “I think seeing them, and the wins they’ve had this week, just adds a little bit more belief that it’s possible.”
It’s also possible because the ‘OG’ Next Gen, which was meant to take the big leap in Slams in the post Big Three era, keeps stumbling far too often even now. The likes of Tsitsipas, Medvedev, Ruud and Rublev — all in their mid to late twenties — have not only stood and watched the stunning overtake of Carlos Alcaraz, 21, and Jannik Sinner 23, but have also fallen to such shocks increasingly.
To be fair to them, their younger versions had to deal with the individual and collective prime of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. If one won’t get you, the other will. Now, if Alcaraz or Sinner won’t get you, a Tien or Mensik will. And that, with two of the Big Three no longer around, leaves little room for excuses.
Incidentally, these early chaotic shocks engineered by fresh faces on big names used to be the order of the day in the women’s tour not too long ago. Young one-Slam wonders shook things up in the women’s draw in Slams from around 2017 to 2021. It’s been much calmer and more consistent over the last three years, with the likes of Iga Swiatek and Sabalenka keeping a lot of the younger hopefuls at arm’s length. Swiatek has reached at least the third round in every Slam after 2019, and Sabalenka after 2020. It partly explains the presence of just one teen in the top 100.
“Me and Aryna, and the other players in the top, are pretty consistent,” Swiatek said in Melbourne. “So maybe if you have us on the draw, there’s less probability that we’re going to flop in the first rounds or something.”
The women’s game is also getting a lot more physical, and it would take something extraordinary for a young girl to keep up with the power of Swiatek, Sabalenka, Gauff or Elena Rybakina from the baseline. Gauff, who made her first Slam quarter-final at the 2021 French Open as a 17-year-old and became the 2023 US Open champion at 19, knows it too well.
“People pay attention to sports science a lot more, so I feel like there’s more of a gap, maybe physically, between a 15-year-old body to a 20-25-year-old. Which, I know the difference,” Gauff, now 20, said. “And the tour is tough. You’ve got to get used to getting your butt kicked.”
The American has been through that as the most recent teen sensation to have gone on to capture a Slam. Gauff recollected how she was almost delusional after her first early deep run in a Slam, placing herself as a “Slam contender” back then as a “naive kid”.
This new band of boys, naive or not, are also dreaming big. “Of course, my expectations are bigger now. I want more and more,” Fonseca said. “I think that’s the mentality of a champion.”
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