What a joy to be back here, free-associating tennis thoughts in the wee hours of Friday morning and then smuggling them into your inboxes a few hours later—or in this special case, a couple of days later. I write pretty much all of these dispatches in the middle of the night, and like some tennis fans in Eastern Standard Time, I am now bracing myself to plunge fully into the nocturnal lifestyle, because all the action is on the other side of this planet. Every year I assure myself I’m going to live a more normal lifestyle during the Australian Open, and every year I succumb to it all the same. As the tournament opens on Sunday—for the first time ever, because of money—we’ll look at a player on each tour who’s coming in hot, who’s properly tuned up during these tune-ups. Before we proceed: a moment of silence for Diego Schwartzman, who, after 36 straight main-draw appearances in majors, crashed out of qualifying. We’ll miss you, Peque.

Before last week, Grigor Dimitrov had won his most recent ATP title in 2017. That was an excellent tennis season. I was naive then; it was my first season writing about the sport in somewhat granular detail. I thought Dimitrov would eat the world. I’d seen him take Rafa five sets in Melbourne, win some meaningful titles, and whip up some shots I had never seen. I had not yet grasped what is now obvious: that tennis could be pretty and still nonlethal.

Yes, Dimitrov had agility and fluidity and flexibility and touch; he also seemed intent on proving that these precious qualities could be summed up to yield woozy, maddening tennis. Over the next six seasons he’d drive me into silence with his passive game plans, blasé sliced backhands, messy serve. His tennis is tuned for all-court aggression, but his mind did not always seem all that interested in that pursuit. In time his name became a (valuable) lesson in withholding excitement about a player’s run of good form. It didn’t look like he’d be able to hang with the waves of new talent breaking on the tour. Eventually I stopped really noticing his name in the draws at all.

But today, in 2024, at the crabbed old age of 32, Dimitrov is playing some of the finest tennis of his career. He’d been building up to this in 2023—defeating Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Hubert Hurkacz in a late-season boom—and he returned from the offseason with a new crocodile on his chest and ground strokes sharpened to daggers. His Brisbane final against Holger Rune was startlingly high-quality, a smelling salt right into the sinuses of week 1. It had been six years since his entertainment value and skill fell into such harmonious alignment. No lazy chipping in this one. That one-hander was ferociously driven, time and time again, until the job was done, and he’d won his first title in 2,240 days, which was the longest gap between titles in tour history. Always nice to see this guy crying for a good reason. He comes into the Open as the No. 13 seed, and I want to see what he will do.

It might seem like a cop-out to drop the extremely famous name of the most recent Slam champ in here. Yes, you’re thinking, thank you sir for this esoteric knowledge, I can really use this insider tidbit to make some big bucks. First of all, gambling is not something I will ever endorse in these dispatches—if you seek that endorsement, just redirect your gaze to the whole zombified entirety of sports media—and second of all, I genuinely wasn’t sure if Coco’s winning would carry into this season. Her run on North American hard courts last summer was a real rampage, cresting with that US Open win, but it was difficult to tell how replicable success would be. Even that seesaw Open final, despite its indelible emotional imprint, wasn’t convincing on all technical fronts. Gauff could play the most hellacious defense on tour, but she couldn’t always end the points when she needed to.

After the Open, Gauff received some reality checks in the mail from Iga Swiatek—first in the semifinal in Beijing, and then at the WTA Finals in Cancun, straight sets in both cases. The American star had finally solved Iga for the first time that summer, but in those matches at the end of the season, the tour monarch yanked the rivalry firmly back her way, securing a 9–1 head-to-head. Against the strongest baseliners, Coco could be undone by the flagging depth on her forehand, a stroke that’s been technically rejiggered multiple times in her brief career. A Big Three had begun to take shape on the WTA, and I felt they had a level of technically sound offense that she’d struggle to match. Could she close the gap in 2024?

Gauff showed up in Auckland as if there’d been no offseason at all, resuming her hard-court supremacy. She cruised through the tournament, up until the final against Elina Svitolina, which got a little circuitous and wonky but, with a little resilience, ended in a successful title defense. Since losing in the first round of Wimbledon last summer, Gauff has gone 29–4. I wouldn’t quite place her among the favorites in Melbourne, but that is mostly a testament to the other wonders out there: Iga Swiatek is still doing to professional tennis players what a paper shredder does to sensitive documents, and Elena Rybakina just whacked Aryna Sabalenka 0 and 3 in the Brisbane final. But Gauff, the No. 4 seed at this Open, is just a few steps behind those two, and she never, ever, ever tires of chasing.

—Don’t miss great interviews with Milos Raonic and our Giri Nathan on The Craig Shapiro Tennis Podcast. And if you’re in Melbourne, stop by the Journal Cafe on Tuesday, where Craig will be in conversation with Ben Rothenberg, who’s just released his biography of Naomi Osaka. Speaking of the self-described Fifth Grand Slam, subscribe to “coach” Craig’s new newsletter here.

—Break Point somehow dedicated a whole episode to Alexander Zverev, while leaving out a crucial part of his resume. 

—Big Foe has been profiled by Esquire.

—It’s been a long break from pro tennis, so you can be forgiven for missing a fun piece Giri wrote for Defector on Jannik Sinner vis-a-vis Italian pastries. Also not to be missed in Defector is this piece on the first collective bargaining agreement in women’s hockey.

—While we’re on the topic of collective bargaining, please subscribe to the Club Leftist Tennis newsletter.

—And ICYMI, The Athletic offered a prescription for “fixing” pro tennis.