A peculiar physics was in operation at this year’s Australian Open, as faster courts served to roll back the clock. Thankfully the rush of serve-and-volley and the rapid gyration of fuzzy yellow balls failed to revert us to a time before tennis, for instance to a Melbourne inhabited by hunter-gatherers or during the exponential growth of the Victorian gold rush.
Instead we travelled back barely a decade, to some of the privileged sport of tennis’ most halcyon days. We were treated to things we thought we might never see so soon again if ever: early departures for Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, and Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, and Venus Williams back on centre stage.
The tournament was not short of promise. Alexander Zverev shone however briefly, while Garbiñe Muguruza faltered, but still managed for the first time to reach the last eight. She departed thanks to Coco Vandeweghe’s hard hitting, as the American, now 25 years old, seemed to find the sort of mental toughness which should make her an enduring threat. And it was likewise for Grigor Dimitrov, sometimes cast as the playboy of men’s tennis, who showed renewed vigour as he played his way into the semis.
But the focus in the end was on the veterans. With Djokovic wilting in the second round up against Denis Istomin, and Murray succumbing to the stresses of Mischa Zverev’s volley game, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal found new life on the fast surfaces of Melbourne Park, and met in a Grand Slam final for the first time since 2011. 2009 marked their only previous Australian Open final encounter, and on that occasion it was Nadal who prevailed.
Meanwhile Venus Williams, at the tender age of 36, made it through to the women’s final to face her sister Serena: her first Grand Slam final since 2009, and her first in Australia since 2003. In the process Venus set an Open Era record for the longest span between Grand Slam final appearances, her first coming almost twenty years ago, at the US Open in 1997 when she was just 17.
But despite her remarkable feat, she was almost overshadowed in her semi-final against Mirjana Lučić-Baroni, two years her junior 34 years old. After breaking through towards the end of the 1990s – and reaching the semi-finals at Wimbledon after winning the Australian Open doubles alongside Martina Hingis – personal problems, including abuse from her father, nearly forced Lučić-Baroni out of the game. She all but disappeared from the tour for a few years in the mid-2000s, with her latest showing the culmination of a long and emotional comeback.
In the finals, Federer – at 35 the oldest man in a Grand Slam final since Ken Rosewall in 1974 – ousted Nadal in the fifth set to take his eighteenth Grand Slam title, pressing further ahead of Pete Sampras and Nadal. And in time-honoured tradition Serena bettered her older sister, at 35 surpassing Steffi Graf to earn her twenty-third Grand Slam title, an Open Era record.
The women’s final was the first occasion in the Open Era whereby two players aged 35 or older competed in the final of a Grand Slam. Federer, Nadal, and the Williams sisters have never been out of the spotlight, but this was a tournament where the fondest memories and frozen posterities came blistering off the page. And if the courts stay fast, perhaps we will get to bask a few more times, in the rosy glow of tennis’ greatest characters playing just like yesterday at their very best.
