2025 Season Preview

The 2025 tennis season is already upon us despite it still being demonstrably December 2024, helping to prove the thesis of this website's title.

Here are five key questions that mark some of the stories to look out for in 2025.

What will Djokovic's partnership with Coach Murray look like?

What to get the man who has everything? Andy Murray, apparently.

In 2024, for the first time since 2017, Novak Djokovic finished the year without a Grand Slam title. Yet the manner in which he won the Olympic singles gold medal - the one thing missing from his singles resumé - shows that Djokovic can still summon a level of tennis that nobody can live with when he is sufficiently fit and motivated. Yet that motivation wasn't always there in the second half of the year. Djokovic skipped tournaments that he would usually play, including the tour finals, and looked pretty human when he did play. It seems a year in which two of his greatest rivals retired and he finally completed the Career Golden Slam left the all-time great a little less driven.

Robbie Dale, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

So what will Djokovic's motivation be going into 2025? Surely the prospect of being the first player in history to win a 25th Grand Slam title will be motivating, as will his quest for a 100th ATP title. Presumably these goals are part of his decision to work with Andy Murray through the Australian Open. Few people know Djokovic's game better than Murray, and maybe having him in his camp will help to summon the spirit of the Big Four era to get him over the line. Even if the experiment works, will it be enough to get past a Jannik Sinner that looked pretty much unbeatable in the second half of 2024? It will be fascinating to find out, and all eyes will be on the Djokovic camp in Australia.

Will there be more fallout from the high profile anti-doping cases?

Two of the biggest stories from the 2024 season happened away from the court: the shock revelations that Jannik Sinner and Iga Świątek, both world number ones at the time, had tested positive for banned substances. While Sinner was cleared of wrongdoing (a decision currently being appealed by the World Anti-Doping Agency) and Świątek has already served her one-month suspension, the full implications of these cases for the standing of tennis' approach to maintaining sporting integrity are yet to be seen.

On the court, the big question is whether Sinner will receive further punishment upon the resolution of the WADA appeal, which could have a major impact on the rankings and Sinner's ability to defend the 8 titles he won in 2024.

Off the court, the way in which these cases were handled - quietly, and with minimal public scrutiny on the players during the process - raised serious questions about whether tennis' anti-doping strategy essentially creates one system for the superstar players and another system for everyone else. The recent news that Grand Slam doubles champion Max Purcell is now provisionally suspended for a doping protocol violation suggests that stories like this aren't going away, and it seems the tennis authorities might have some work to do to keep the situation from spilling further out of control.

Will Zheng Qinwen take the next step?

When Zheng Qinwen made the Australian Open final at the start of last year, there was a bit of a sense that she had benefitted from the draw opening up and was probably not quite at that level yet. The thumping she received from Aryna Sabalenka in the final certainly didn't help to dispel that feeling.

However, by the end of the year, and with an Olympic singles gold under her belt alongside titles in Palermo and Tokyo, it felt like Zheng had cemented herself as the hot hand on tour. It will be interesting to see whether Zheng can bring that momentum into 2025 and go one step further than she did at last year's Australian Open. She does seem to have a bit of a matchup problem against Sabalenka, who will be coming into Australia a convincing world number one this time, so Zheng will probably have to figure out how to turn that head-to-head around if she's going to join the likes of Sabalenka and Świątek at the top of the game.

Can Świątek get back to her best?

2024 wasn't a great year for Iga Świątek, at least by her own ridiculous standards. In the second half of the year, Świątek lost her world number one ranking, split with her coach, and received a suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.

Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

She also just generally seemed to have lost her mojo, appearing stressed on court and at times even a little one-dimensional in her play. Now that Świątek is working with a new voice in Wim Fissette, it will be interesting to see whether she can reintroduce some variety into her game and rediscover the intensity and spark that led to her being world number one for 75 consecutive weeks from 2022 to 2023.

Which of tennis' rising stars will take the next step?

There has been some fear in the tennis world that, with the retirement of Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and (eventually) Novak Djokovic, the sport may lose some of its shine and appeal. In the women's game, the sheer number of players who have been able to win Grand Slam titles in recent years, and the emergence of out-of-nowhere stories like Emma Raducanu and Jasmine Paolini has ensured that there is always something to get excited about week-to-week.

On the men's side, the emergence in the last year or two of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner as genuine forces in the sport seemed to come just at the right time, ensuring that there were new protagonists to define the next era of men's tennis. Their rise has been so rapid and so complete, though, that it might create a new problem for the health of the game: can anyone actually compete with Sinner and Alcaraz right now? At different times this year, Sinner and Alcaraz looked unbeatable by anyone but each other, and this did leave a bit of a feeling that the previous generation of talent (including the likes of Zverev, Tsitsipas, Rublev and Berrettini) may have already seen their best opportunity to challenge at the top come and go. A key question for 2025, then, is who can make that next step up to the ridiculously high level at which Sinner and Alcaraz have set the bar?

Kuberzog, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

There is a pack of young and improving players who stand out as possible options, including Jack Draper, Lorenzo Musetti, Holger Rune, Arthur Fils, Jiri Lehecka and Ben Shelton. But in truth, the gap from these players to Sinner and Alcaraz seemed pretty chasmic in 2024, so it will be interesting to see whether any of them can establish themselves as real major challengers.

What's next?

The first chance to track some of these stories will be in the United Cup, which started on the 27th December. Next week the first ATP and WTA events get underway in Brisbane (WTA500, ATP250), Auckland (WTA250) and Hong Kong (ATP250).