Monumental upsets at the 2017 Australian Open reflect the rise from the lower ranks more than decline from the top.
With unseeded players upsetting No. 1 seeds Andy Murray and Angelique Kerber, as well as No. 2 Novak Djokovic and No. 4 Simona Halep, it’s clear that the depth in the ATP World Tour and WTA Tour fields is strong.
Out with dominance and the Big Four. Parity has arrived in Melbourne.
What began as a showdown for the No. 1 ranking has turned into a free-for-all. Suddenly, it’s anybody’s tournament.
As Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim wrote, "Upsets do many things. Like a crowbar, they open draws. They remind top players of their vulnerability; and lesser players of their potential."
Denis Istomin's upset over Djokovic put top-seeded players on notice. Bring your A-game to every match because against a red-hot player, no matter how low the ranking, the B and C stuff won't do.
Unranked, wildcard or bouncing back, hundreds of players are hitting the gym, spending hours on the court and grinding it out. The gap between the best and the rest seems to be getting smaller.
Aging and once-dominant stars like Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Roger Federer remain in the tournament, but in no way are they clear favorites to make it to the finals.
Even 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal heads into his quarterfinals round against No. 3 Milos Raonic as the lower-seeded player. Raonic has been in a Grand Slam final (Wimbledon 2016) more recently than Nadal.
Meanwhile, No. 17 seed Federer takes on unseeded Mischa Zverev, who upset Murray with a serve and volley game plucked out of the 1980s.
“Definitely the best match of my life...I believed that playing serve and volley against [Murray] and slicing a lot, trying to destroy his rhythm, was going to work, which it did in the end,” Zverev told Tennis.com's Steve Tignor.
Zverev, 29, plays old school, but he's younger than four other quarterfinalists—Federer, Tsonga, Nadal and Stan Wawrinka, all in their 30s. There are no players under 25 in the men's quarterfinals.
On the women's side, Venus, Serena and Mirjana Lucic-Baroni are 36, 35 and 34, respectively. They were all promising young stars when they played against all-time greats Monica Seles and Steffi Graf.
Lucic-Baroni won the girls juniors Australian Open in 1997 and reached the finals in 1998, where she lost to Graf.
“It's incredible now. I mean, back then it was kind of expected of me and it was normal,” Lucic-Baroni told reporters.
Now she's a feel-good comeback story, finally taking her place among the Williams sisters, the aging stars fighting to keep emerging talents like Johanna Konta, Karolina Pliskova and Garbine Muguruza at bay.
Konta, 25, will play Serena for the first time when they meet in the quarterfinals Wednesday. She has as good a chance as anyone else, given that she's won nine matches in a row, including the title in Sydney.
Serena is the only woman left in the field who has won the Australian Open. Defending champion Kerber fell to big-hitting American CoCo Vandeweghe. With Kerber out, the top side of the draw will produce either Venus' first trip back to a Grand Slam final since Wimbledon 2009, a first-time Aussie Open finalist or someone in their first Slam final.
On the men's side, three of the eight—Federer, Wawrinka and Nadal—have won the tournament, and Tsonga has reached the final in Melbourne.
There was so much talk of a Djokovic-Murray showdown and a Serena-Kerber battle that few considered the possibility of a Federer-Nadal and all Williams sisters finals. Now that would be a serious throwback in the outback.
Bill Connelly of SB Nation wrote, "Serena aside, it is perhaps too much to ask for these three to win slams or reach No. 1 in the world anymore. But it’s impossible not to long for another run or two. And we might be getting one (or more) as we speak."
But not so fast. Along with the older superstars, the up-and-comers and comeback artists, a couple of underachievers found their way into the quarterfinals. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Grigor Dimitrov, both 25, were heavily hyped when they turned pro but struggled to live up to expectations. Perhaps they are finally playing up to their potential.
After ending Istomin's run, Dimitrov spoke with reporters about what it means to have six of the top eight seeds gone before the quarterfinals. “I'm not saying that it's not. But in the same time, we saw that everyone can beat everyone. If you follow your own path and the way you're playing, the belief that you have, anything can happen.”