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Welcome to the Australian Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.
On day nine, Gael Monfils’ magical run came to a close as remarkable exploits caught up to players all over Melbourne Park.
Mirra Andreeva finds relief from singles exit on the doubles court
Off the back of a dispiriting defeat to world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka on Sunday, Mirra Andreeva found refuge a few hundred feet away.
She hopped over to John Cain Arena from the Rod Laver Arena to play doubles with her fellow Russian and close friend Diana Shnaider. They had a good time, as they always do, and beat the Italian pair of Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani, avenging their defeat in the Olympic gold medal match five months ago.
They were in action again on Monday, getting the better of the Aussie pair Kimberly Birrell and Olivia Gadecki. Andreeva and Shnaider won the Brisbane event earlier this month. They work very well as a pair, the classic rightie and leftie combination, and both have told The Athletic how they try to make each other laugh and keep things light.
Andreeva (left) and Shnaider are becoming a formidable force in doubles. (Shi Tang / Getty Images)
For Andreeva, 17, and Shnaider, 20, it can’t be underestimated how much of a bonus this kind of thing is: a break from the suffocating pressure of the singles tour, even for players so young who should by any rational measure be given time. It doesn’t always work that way with rankings of No. 13 (Shnaider) and No. 15 (Andreeva) and given their previous success together, they will be spying an opportunity for a deep run.
They play the unseeded Kamilla Rakhimova (another Russian) and Sara Sorribes Tormo in the quarterfinals.
GO DEEPER
The kids were alright: Why women’s tennis is no longer a world of teenage prodigies
Charlie Eccleshare
Gael Monfils bows out of the Australian Open with a different kind of highlight reel
Here is the problem with playing Gael Monfils. Even when he has no legs, it’s very hard.
From the middle of the second set against Ben Shelton on Sunday, Monfils, who is 38, had the legs of a 70-year-old. He was cramping up a storm on the back of becoming the oldest man to win an ATP Tour title before going into the second week of the Australian Open and recording his first-ever top-five win at a Grand Slam over Taylor Fritz.
But Monfils, tennis acrobat and magician, did the math. He needed to hit one good shot four times in his service games, then seven in a tiebreak if he could get that far. In Shelton, the 22-year-old American flamethrower, he was playing someone still learning how to return against a great server and someone who had succumbed to Adrian Mannarino’s wiliness at last year’s Australian Open.
And so, a career littered with highlight-reel moments got another hour and a half of them that will look nothing like the rest. There were no jumping backhands or winners from a split or twisting overheads from mid-air, but what ensued for all of the second set and all of the third except the final points should still leave jaws on the ground.
Monfils can win games and points impersonating a backboard as much as he can when he’s impersonating a magician. He just needs his opponent to cooperate by hitting the ball back to him and letting Monfils’ rubber arm do its work. He can hold a tennis ball on his strings seemingly forever, allowing him to nestle the ball into perfect slots or just put it back until Shelton made a mistake.
“He was painting lines with the forehand and the backhand. Just ripping the ball,” Shelton said later. “One of those dangerous moments that you see him in where you’re not sure if he’s okay, if he’s not okay, if he’s trying, but he’s hitting a lot of winners.
Could this really happen? It sure looked like it might, one serve-bomb after another, until Shelton finally started banging at the lines again and Monfils’ legs just couldn’t work anymore.
“The little kid in me always wants to see Gael win. I always want to see him hit the highlight shot and trick shot,” Shelton said later.
“Players always get mad when the crowd is against them or not for them, but honestly, all I could do today was appreciate the fans getting behind him. It was just a cool moment for me to be a part of. ”
When it was over, Shelton, who has been watching Monfils highlights on YouTube for most of his life, pointed at one of his idols and clapped his racket to get the crowd louder. Not for himself, but for Monfils.
Matt Futterman
A day of remarkable runs ended by their brilliance
It was bound to happen eventually. Longshot runs generally come apart, burning out on the brilliance that made them last.
Elena Rybakina made a valiant go of it with a bad back but fell in three sets to Madison Keys.
Eva Lys, a lucky loser, ran into the Iga Swiatek buzzsaw and was finished in 59 minutes.
Alex Michelsen, the 20-year-old American, who took out two seeds in Stefanos Tsitsipas and Karen Khachanov in the first week, couldn’t get through the foot speed and endless retrieving of Alex De Minaur, the hometown favorite.
Learner Tien’s incredible run at his first Australian Open came to an end. (Graham Denholm / Getty Images)
And Learner Tien, the 19-year-old qualifier from Orange County and slayer of Daniil Medvedev, fell victim to a familiar Grand Slam foe: a very late night on the job.
“In the last couple days, I had a lot of adrenaline that kind of masked how tired my body actually was,” Tien said in an interview after falling in four sets to Lorenzo Sonego.
“From early in the match, I just felt like I never got that second wind or that kick that kind of got me going like it did in some of my other matches, especially my third-round match.”
Matt Futterman
Iga Swiatek rumbles on
It’s getting a bit ridiculous now. After dispatching Eva Lys 6-0, 6-1 to reach the Australian Open quarterfinals, Iga Swiatek has dropped a total of two games in her last two matches and four in her last three. She has lost 10 in the whole tournament and even for someone who has rattled off bagel and breadstick (6-1) sets with such regularity that “Iga’s Bakery” has entered tennis parlance, it’s still been a spectacular first few matches for the world No. 2.
She was so dominant that Lys, who had the world No. 2 down 15-40 in the first game of the match, could only extend it to 59 minutes. The three points Lys won in that first game accounted for 30 percent of her total in the entire first set, while Swiatek made 43 of the 45 returns she hit in the match.
Next, she plays Emma Navarro, who was involved in another marathon match to edge past Daria Kasatkina. Navarro, the No. 8 seed, has played four three-setters and has been in serious danger of exiting the tournament in all of them. So far she has used her remarkable persistence and toughness to get through, but Swiatek in this form is a test in which getting to the third set is the hardest part.
GO DEEPER
Emma Navarro’s reluctant step into the tennis limelight
Charlie Eccleshare
Shot of the day
That’s the point of the tournament wrapped up by Jannik Sinner and Holger Rune.
Point. Of. The. Tournament.
Take a bow, @janniksin and @holgerrune2003!@wwos • @espn • @eurosport • @wowowtennis • #AusOpen • #AO2025 pic.twitter.com/G2egQuhOuZ
— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 20, 2025
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Australian Open men’s draw 2025
Australian Open women’s draw 2025
Tell us what you noticed on the ninth day…
(Top photo of Gael Monfils: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
