-with Reuters

I don’t know about you (but the numbers on this blog are telling me a pretty clear story) but this is a pretty low-key start to the summer of tennis.

There are a number of terrific players in the tournaments that we’ve got coming up over the next few days and weeks, but are there genuine star names with star power for the casual fan?

Of course, part of that is down to the retirement of tennis greats Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams.

That has made promoting events more difficult, according to United Cup tournament director Stephen Farrow.

But he says organisers must grab the opportunity to push new talent, such as Alexander Zverev, Taylor Fritz, Iga Świątek and Coco Gauff.

“It’s true to say that from a promotional standpoint, it’s very easy if you’ve got Roger Federer or Rafa Nadal turning up,” Farrow told Reuters.

“You’re talking about people who are absolute superstars of the sports arena … with those guys moving on, it does make it a bit more difficult to promote and tell the story of the athletes playing the event.

“I always see that as a positive, because it’s on all of us in tennis to tell the story of this new talent.

“We’ve got a lot of them playing the United Cup. They’re incredibly exciting and captivating to watch. I’m not worried about the future.”

Farrow also said the United Cup was still building its brand and boosting awareness with fans and players.

“Last year we saw a really big step forward when we moved to a new format with one women’s singles, one men’s singles and one mixed doubles. It was incredibly competitive.

“Now we’ve established ourselves on the tennis calendar two weeks from the Australian Open. We’ve seen with the field this year that players want to play this event.”

-with AAP

Let’s quickly switch our attention to Sydney, where Alex de Minaur and the rest of the Australian team are ready and waiting to get their campaign underway.

De Minaur had a great time of it last time out, beating Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev ahead of what turned into a career best 2024 season.

But the world number nine says he’s under no pressure to replicate his United Cup success when he returns to Ken Rosewell Arena.

Led by de Minaur, Australia reached the semi-finals before defeats in the women’s singles and mixed doubles allowed eventual winners Germany to reach the decider against Poland.

But the 25-year-old, eager to enjoy home advantages, isn’t worried about recapturing or outdoing last season’s fairytale campaign.

“I’ve never associated playing in Australia as pressure,” de Minaur said on Friday.

“I’ve always associated it as excitement and something that I’m looking forward to every single year because we don’t get to do it as often as we would love to.

“Whenever we’re back here, the season is starting, I know we’re playing in front of our home crowd, and that’s always exciting what I get up for.

“It always brings the best tennis in me.”

Beyond once again using the tournament as a springboard for the Australian Open, de Minaur will be out to lead Australia to their first team title since the 2016 Hopman Cup.

Australia, captained by Lleyton Hewitt, were knocked out of the Davis Cup semi-finals by Italy in November after finishing runners-up last year.

Hewitt’s team will also face Great Britain, featuring Billy Harris and de Minaur’s fiance Katie Boulter, in the group stage.

“The biggest thing is we keep knocking on the door,” Hewitt said.

“We have come bloody close, but it’s not an easy thing to do.

“You look at some of these teams that end up winning these team competitions, and they got some pretty awesome players, some generational greats, or legends of the game.

“Once again, we’ll do all the preparation that we need, and hopefully we can go out there and execute, but we’re certainly not taking anything for granted.”

Young gun Olivia Gadecki takes on Nadia Podoroska to kick off Australia’s United Cup campaign, before de Minaur plays Argentina’s Tomas Etcheverry on Saturday, followed by the mixed doubles match.

You can read a bit more about de Minaur’s hopes and dreams for the 2025 season, right here.

Elena Rybakina has started the way she means to continue – winning the first set 6-2 inside 38 minutes.

It looked like it was going to be a complete blow out at one point, but Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro did fight back and start winning some points on her own serve.

Rybakina is a tad rusty in parts, despite her incredible start, but looks very comfortable powering shots from the baseline.

We already spoke about one Aussie being forced out of the Australian Open.

Well, now there is another.

Ajla Tomljanović will miss the preparation tournaments with an unspecified injury, and will head straight to the Australian Open.

Tomljanović, ranked number 109 in the world, missed this year’s Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon due to a knee injury.

The 31-year-old’s last appearance on the WTA Tour was in Mexico in October.

Although the Brisbane International does not get underway for a couple of days, qualifying is underway out at the Queensland Tennis Centre – and there’s been some mixed news for the Aussies.

Australian Maddison
Inglis needed little time to account for Belgian Ysaline
Bonaventure, the 26-year-old, world number 154 from Perth winning through 6-2, 6-4 in just over an hour.

It was a bit tougher for fourth seed Daria Saville though, who was knocked out by 20-year-old Ukrainian Anastasiya Konstantinovna Soboleva, who put up a tremendous fight that belied her 217 ranking to win his a three-set marathon.

Moscow-born Saville, who is ranked just outside the top 100, dropped the first set 2-6, fought back to win the second 6-2, but then lost the decider 7-5 in a gruelling two hours and 31 minutes.

Goran Ivanišević was just talking to Stan Sport, on the sideline of what is just his first official WTA match.

He said he’d need to have a little bit more time before he could explain the difference between coaching on the WTA Tour compared to the ATP Tour.

He said he wants her to show more emotion.

“Definitely not going to see her breaking racquets but hopefully she does show more emotion,” he said on Stan Sport’s coverage.

“She’s a very different person and very calm. But I’ve been trying to put some emotion and I think it’s going to help her game.”

He also said there were things he wanted to work on with his new charge, particularly her serve.

He wants Rybakina to come forward a bit more and try to win points a lot sooner rather than remain stuck on the baseline.

“We worked a couple weeks in Dubai. A little bit on the serve. Trying to push her to come to the net more,” the Croatian former Wimbledon winner said.

“She has a big game and can finish the point much earlier than she was usually doing.

“It’s a process. She needs to put in her head that she can play more aggressively, come to the net, and finish some points with the volleys.”

It will be interesting to see how she goes.

Last year she won 79.5 per cent of her service games and hit 358 aces.

The games won percentage was the highest of her career, but her ace count was down by nearly 100.

She also was pinged for 137 double faults.

She is going OK here today though – Rybakina has not dropped a point in her first two service games and leads 3-0 inside 10 minutes of game time.

Elena Rybakina, one of tennis’s biggest stars, is next on court.

The Moscow-born 25-year-old is ranked sixth in the world, won the Brisbane International last year and, perhaps more importantly, is an Australian Open finalist from 2023 and the 2022 Wimbledon champion.

The eight-time titlist on the WTA tour is a supremely powerful player, but struggled in the latter part of the year, missing the Olympics with illness and the Asian swing of the tour with a back injury.

In November, she split with coach Stefano Vukov following the US Open and is now under the steady gaze of Goran Ivanišević.

Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro is ranked 54 and is the Spanish number two. 

The 22-year-old has not been on the WTA Tour long, but has a WTA Challenger title from March at the Antalya Challenger.

You might remember her from Wimbledon this year, where she upset defending champion Markéta Vondroušová to reach the third round.

She has never qualified for the Australian Open before.

It only took one hour and four minutes for Pablo Carreño Busta, who has steamrolled Alexander Shevchenko in straight sets 6-2, 6-1.

An impressive performance from the former world number 10, and one that seemed to surprise him too.

“Impressive also for me, I didn’t expect this level at this stage of the year,” Carreño Busta says with a smile on Stan Sport.

“It as very tough last year and the year before to try and continue to be my best because of the injury.

“When I started in the middle of the year it was very hard for me, the rehab.

“It was very important for me this year, I have worked very hard to be 100 per cent now.”

Former world number one Simona Halep also dropped the news late last night that she is pulling out of the Australian leg of the season.

The two-time grand slam winner said she felt shoulder and knee pain after playing in Abu Dhabi.

She has decided not to head to the southern hemisphere, where she had a wild card for the Auckland International and Australian Open qualifying.

Some bad news for Australian fans in Brisbane as Thanasi Kokkinakis has pulled out of the tournament with a hip injury.

“Sad to miss Brisbane Tennis this year,” Kokkinakis wrote on social media.

“Dealing with a small hip issue that needs some more time, but hopefully back for the rest of the summer.”

The 28-year-old world number 77 was given a wildcard for the event.

Pablo Carreño Busta dropped his first service game, but after that it was really just one-way traffic for the veteran.

He claims the first set of the United Cup in just 40 minutes, 6-2.

Great question, KV.

It all boils down to the combined rankings of five highest-ranked men and five highest-ranked women entered by each team as per their ATP or WTA rankings respectively.

This does mean some players that are ranked relatively low in their individual rankings, are in a higher-seeded team.

A good example of this sixth-seed Great Britain, who have Billy Harris (110), Jan Choinski (184), Katie Boulter (35) and Yuriko Lily Miyazaki (160) in their team.

Despite that, they are ranked higher than seventh-ranked Canada, who have two singles players rated higher than GB’s best, in Felix Auger-Aliassime (21) and Leylah Fernandez (34), but are offset by the far-lower ranked Liam Draxl (272) and Stacey Fung (277).

International visitors? To this fair country? Quick, shove some wildlife at them.

The United States team headed out to Rottnest Island on Boxing Day, where they were introduced to some of the native quokkas.

The USA, number one seeds here thanks to world number 3 Coco Gauff and world number 4 Taylor Fritz.

Gauff was here with her family, who also came out to enjoy the local attractions.

“It’s my first Christmas away from home,” Gauff told reporters.

“It was important for them to be able to come with me.

“They’re on Christmas break, so for them to be able to see a different part of the world is cool.”

Fritz, who has played in Perth before, in the ATP Cup, said he was looking forward to playing doubles with Gauff.

“Coco and I got some experience playing mixed doubles at the Olympics, so hopefully that will help us,” he said.

With several tournaments – and therefore matches – all running concurrently, this is going to be a slightly different blog to what we’d often be accustomed to.

For one, we are not going to be delivering a blow-by-blow account of the action. It sets up unrealistic expectations, frankly.

What we will be doing is giving score updates and news from around the traps, across the breadth of the country.

So please get involved and send us your questions, your thoughts on the action, especially if you’re at the venues.

Let us know what’s on your mind (from a tennis perspective), we’ll share it with everyone else and we can all dive in.

Great start for the youngster, who lost more games than he won in 2024, 21-28.

He has broken the Spaniard at the first time of asking to taken an early lead.

But then Carreño Busta hit straight back to level the score at 1-1.

First on court is Russian-born Kazakhstani Alexander Shevchenko, who takes on Spanish veteran Pablo Carreño Busta.

The 24-year-old Alexander Shevchenko has only recently switched allegiance to Kazakhstan, has never got beyond the second round at a grand slam in his short career and is ranked 78th in the world.

Pablo Carreño Busta starts the year ranked 196 after a torrid time with injuries.

Don’t let that lowly ranking fool you though.

The 33-year-old has been as high as 10th in the world, reached the semi-finals of the US Open twice (2017, 2020) and won Olympic bronze in Tokyo.

Carreño Busta is serving first.

So what is the United Cup?

This is the third edition of the nation-based team event, which features 18 countries, men and women, who compete in six, three-team groups based in Perth and Sydney.

It was born out of the short-lived ATP-backed ATP Cup, which featured only men’s teams.

That team-based format proved popular, in part due to the guaranteed three matches each player can get under their belts, in part due to the fact they are representing their nation.

This tournament replaced the hugely popular Hopman Cup that ran from 1989 to 2019 in Perth.

The teams will play a men’s and women’s best-of-three-sets singles match, followed by a mixed doubles contest.

The winner of each group will play in the quarterfinals, along with the best runner up in each city.

Today, we’re starting off in Perth with Spain, which is seeded 14th, against Kazakhstan, seeded ninth.

As I mentioned, there is plenty of tennis coming up in the very near future for us all to get our teeth stuck into.

Here’s a brief summary of how it’s all going to go down over the next couple of weeks.

Hello and welcome to the first match of the Australian summer of tennis!

My name is Simon Smale and I’ll be bringing you all the action as it happens in the opening matches of the United Cup, which kicks off today in Perth’s magnificent arena.

This summer, the ABC is bringing you all the action from all five pre-Australian Open tournaments, before our extensive coverage of the action at Melbourne Park gets underway on January 12.

Before we get there though, we have plenty of tennis to get through, so let’s hop to it shall we?