Stars fly out of Australian Open, after Davis Cup they will be waiting for Marseille and South American clay courts

The Australian Open is over, and so the tennis players are moving, or rather flying to two continents. The clay players are heading mostly to challenger tournaments in South America. And the others are waiting for the ATP indoor tournament in Marseille from February 5th. A tournament with tradition, good points and big prize money.

The Australian open is over

The tournament in Montpellier, better known as the Open Sud de France, is an indoor tournament founded in 1987. The tournament is played indoors on a GreenSet hard surface. A similar surface is used in the Masters in Paris, Basel, Switzerland, and Stockholm, Sweden, for example.

The Australian Open winner Jannik Sinner from Italy is also entered for this event. But he may take a break after his big win. The number one player in Marseille should be the Danish 20-year-old Holger Rune. The defending champion of last year’s semi-final came to France straight from the Grand Slam courts in Melbourne, where he was unexpectedly eliminated in the second round by Cazaux.

However, Rune did not start this year at all badly. He played the final in Brisbane, where he also dealt with an unpleasant draw in the form of several excellent players – Purcell, Shevchenko, Ducckworth and Safiullina.

But Maria Sharapova’s former boyfriend – Bulgarian Dimitrov, was already a big bite for the Danish tennis player. At the Australian Open, he was among the shortlist of candidates for the title, at least as a player in the top ten in the world, he was expected in the quarter-finals. But the Australian Open will definitely not be one of Rune’s favourite memories of big tournaments. But he will already be the favourite in Marseille!

The eyes of the tennis world are turning to other tournaments

The number two seeded player is the Russian playing under the neutral flag, Alexander Bublik. The aforementioned 26-year-old native of Gatchina near St. Petersburg won the event in Marseille in 2022. And this season has started rather well for him as well.

In Adelaide, he made it to the semi-finals, took on Evans and Musetti, and was stopped only by Draper. But at the Australian Open, Bublik surprisingly dropped out in the first round, losing to Nagal of India in three sets.

The third seed is twenty-six-year-old Canadian Félix Auger-Aliassime, a native of Montreal, currently living in Monte Carlo. He has had a bad start to the season and is already looking forward to European tournaments. And the possible “dark horses” of the tournament?

Twenty-one-year-old Flavio Coboli, an Italian youngster from Florence living in Rome, and the fourth seed in the Marseille tournament, twenty-three-year-old naturalized Kazakh Alexander Shevchenko, who hails from Rostov-on-Don and now lives in Vienna. Of course, the big attraction for him is that he is training at the famous Gunther Bresnik Tennis Academy in Vienna.

Before the aforementioned tournament in Marseille, some of the players have a Davis Cup match to play on the second and third of February.

Source: ATP Tour