Sunday, January 28, 2018

Australian Open 2018

We're just at the first Grand Slam event of the year and already, records continue to shatter. Roger Federer and Caroline Wozniacki were left standing after the dust settled, holding aloft the men's and women's singles trophies.




While both were champions, there was a stark contrast between their wins. This was Roger's 6th trophy in Melbourne, tying him with Novak Djokovic and Roy Emerson for most men's Australian Open titles (and with Novak for men's titles during the Open era). Even more mind-boggling - this is Roger's 20th Grand Slam singles title. That is just absolutely incredible!




Caroline, on the other hand, finally won a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. She beat Simona Halep in the final. Both players had been ranked #1 - Halep was #1 coming into the tournament and Wozniacki was #1 several years ago - but neither of them had won a Grand Slam event. In fact, both previously had a strong enough case for best female player never to have won a major title. We knew one of them was going to shake that title off. The winner would also be ranked #1 after the tournament. As it turned out, it was Wozniacki.




But let's talk about Roger Federer again for a bit. Not only is his Grand Slam haul of 20 the best among the men by a decent margin, it is only 3 short of the women's open era record held by Serena Williams and 4 short of the overall record held by Margaret Court. People have been talking about how Serena may eclipse Margaret's record and here you see Roger knocking on that door. Is he going to end his career with the most Grand Slam titles by an invidual, whether male or female? It will be interesting to see how the rest of his career pans out (and that of Serena's too as both of them are within arm's reach of that all-time record).

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