Australian Open serves up the opening chapter in a season of captivating action

THE temperatures are rising fast in Australia, and that can only mean one thing: It’s time for the start of another tennis season and the first Grand Slam of the year, the Australian Open.

The 2025 edition of this beloved tournament is fast shaping up to be a fascinating battle of the very best from the men’s and women’s tours, with the players returning from their breaks and ready to begin a brand new campaign in style by claiming the first major trophy on offer.

The Australian Open is viewed by many as a new beginning as ranking points in the men’s ATP Race and the women’s WTA Race are reset.

The action got underway in Melbourne on Sunday (Jan 12) and will continue for the next fortnight until the championship finals take place at the majestic Rod Laver Arena on the weekend of Jan 25-26.

More than 1.1 million fans passed through the gates across the three weeks of last year’s Australian Open (including the first seven days of qualifying) – a new Grand Slam record and an increase of more than 200,000 compared to 2023.

They will watch earnestly from the stands in Melbourne Park as they find out who will be crowned the winners of the 113th edition of the Australian Open, one of the biggest sporting events in the Southern Hemisphere.

The women’s singles winner will be presented with the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup, while the men’s singles winner will be presented with the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup.

Rolex Testimonee Roger Federer, who retired in 2022 with six Australian Open titles to his name, had nothing but praise for this tournament that’s aptly nicknamed the “Happy Slam”.

“The Australian Open is the first major tournament of the season and has so much going for it. Melbourne is such a great sporting city; Melbourne Park is a fantastic tennis venue and Rod Laver Arena is iconic,” he said.

“The Rolex Sky-Dweller I received after winning the tournament in 2017 is the watch which holds the most sentimental value to me. It has a butterfly engraving on the back because I referred to having butterflies before the final, so it was a special message from the Rolex family.”

Over a century of history

The Australian Open has a special place in the hearts of tennis fans, not just in Australia but all around the world. It is one of the oldest and most traditional tournaments, with its roots going all the way back to 1905 when the players competed on grass. It was more than 80 years later – 1988, to be precise – when the organisers made the switch to hard courts.

For Rolex, the Australian Open is significant as it marks the start of the Swiss watchmaker’s support for the annual tennis calendar. The brand, which has been involved in tennis for close to five decades, became the Official Timekeeper of the Australian Open in 2008.

In 2019, Rolex’s long-standing partnership with tennis extended to all four Grand Slam tournaments – the Australian Open in Melbourne; Roland-Garros in Paris; The Championships, Wimbledon in London; and the US Open in New York.

The brand’s passion for exacting performance is also shared with the leading tournaments and players partnered by Rolex worldwide, including the Davis Cup by BNP Paribas, the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, the Rolex Shanghai Masters and the Rolex Paris Masters.

More recently, Rolex reinforced its support of the women’s game by expanding its partnership with the Women’s Tennis Association.

Coco in fine form

Among the many Rolex Testimonees who will be eyeing glory Down Under is Coco Gauff. The American, who is two months shy of her 21st birthday, has truly come of age in a professional career that only began in 2018 when she was just 14. She made her WTA debut at the Miami Open the following year and has not looked back since.

Gauff enjoyed a stellar 2024 season and she now has a career-high ranking of world No 2 in singles and world No 1 in doubles. She performed strongly at the four Majors – she made it to the semi-finals of both the Australian Open and Roland-Garros, reached the fourth round of Wimbledon, and won the US Open. She also took home the doubles title at Roland-Garros with her partner Katerina Siniakova.

At the 2024 China Open in Beijing, she became the youngest champion in 14 years after defeating Karolina Muchova in the final.

Gauff rounded off a spectacular season to remember when she swept past all before her in Riyadh last November to win her first WTA Finals title. She ended the season with 13 victories in her past 15 matches, and few would bet against her continuing that red-hot form going into the Australian Open.

In all, Gauff’s growing trophy cabinet includes nine WTA Tour singles titles and nine doubles titles, and all signs point to her adding to that haul over the coming months.

She will relish her time on the famous blue hard courts in Melbourne, for she boasts a perfect record of eight wins from eight WTA Tour finals on that surface. She’s now the first female player to achieve that in more than 50 years of Open Era play, and she will be looking to shatter even more records in 2025.