Awards Season

The ATP & WTA tours have officially announced the picks for the annual year-end awards!

As always, there is plenty to discuss, so let’s get into this week’s topics, presented by SuckerPunch! 🥒

New Videos!!

We have a brand new video out on our channel this week. We go over how Roger Federer has (almost) became a billionaire off the court!

Check it out and let us know your thoughts!

What Happened Last Week?

The final WTA 125 event of the season concluded on Sunday. The final 125 champ is Viktorija Golubic, who came out on top on the hard courts of Limoges, France. She defeated fellow Swiss Celine Naef in the final. 

Live Ranking Update: The Biggest Movers Of The Week

Viktorija Golubic has moved back into the top 100 with a title at the WTA 125 event in Limoges, France. She is now just inside double digits at #90. 

The former world #35 is working to put herself into a good position for a top seed in the Australian Open qualifying draw. 

Major Tournament Updates

With the professional tennis season officially in the books, there are no main tour-level events remaining in 2024. 

The next big events to look forward to are the United Cup and the start of the Australian Open lead-up tournaments:

• ATP/WTA United Cup - Perth & Sydney (December 27 - January 5, 2025)

• ATP/WTA Brisbane International (December 30 - January 5, 2025)

• ATP Hong Kong Open (December 30 - January 5, 2025)

• WTA ASB Classic - Auckland (December 30 - January 5, 2025)

Watch Out For These Players

Jakub Mensik:

This 19-year-old was named the 2024 ATP Newcomer of the Year after an impressive breakthrough season. This award is selected by the players, and goes to the NextGen player who entered the Top 100 for the first time and made the biggest impact on the ATP tour this year.

Mensik’s run to his maiden ATP Tour final in Doha in February is what put him on many people’s radars. He was competing in the main draw of a tour-level event for the first time, and defeated Andy Murray, Andrey Rublev, & Gael Monfils en route to the final.

Some other highlights from the Czech’s season include representing his country at the Paris Olympics, reaching the third round of the US Open, and making back-to-back quarterfinal runs at the Rolex Shanghai Masters and Erste Bank Open in Vienna. 

He currently sits at a career high of No. 48 in the world, and will look to climb even higher in 2025.

Lulu Sun:

The WTA’s Newcomer of the Year award went to this 23-year-old from New Zealand. The former Texas Longhorn began the year ranked outside the top 200, but made her way all the way up to No. 40 by the end of the year.

Sun made her Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open as a qualifier. Her best slam result of the year came at Wimbledon, where she made the quarterfinals as a qualifier, becoming the first New Zealand woman to do so in the Open Era. She defeated No.8 Qinwen Zheng during that run, which was her first ever top 10 win.  

Sun reached her first tour-level final this year as well at the WTA 500 event in Monterey. Her peak ranking this year was No.39, which will certainly be improved on in 2025. 

Off The Court

Wawrinka Awarded Wild Card Into Australian Open:

Three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka was awarded a wild card into next month’s Australian Open. 

Tennis Australia announced the wild cards last week. The other wild cards that were announced were all Australians, including: Tristan Schoolkate, Li Tu, James McCabe, Daria Saville, Ayla Tomljanovic, Emerson Jones, Talia Gibson, and Maya Joint.

More main draw and qualifying wild cards will be announced soon.

Berrettini Named Tennis Ambassador By Saudi Arabia’s PIF:

Saudi Arabia’s Public Interest Fund (PIF) has named Matteo Berrettini as its tennis ambassador. This role will aim to help nurture the next generation of players and elevate the sport globally.

Berrettini seems ready for the role stating “one of my roles is to inspire the next generation, the youth, the kids… together with the PIF I’m going to be able to do that… this is one of the greatest things I can do”.

It will be interesting to see how this new role potentially changes and evolves going forward.

ATP, WTA Players of The Year Announced:

Jannik Sinner was voted Fans’ Favorite (Singles) in the annual ATP Awards. 

Sinner had a dominant 2024, starting the year on a 16-match winning streak, which included his maiden major in Melbourne. 

Overall, he won a tour-best 8 titles, including a second major at the US Open, three Masters 1000s, and the Nitto ATP Finals. He capped off the year with a Davis Cup title defense for Italy. He also finished the year as the year-end world No. 1.

On the WTA side, Aryna Sabalenka earned the distinction of POTY. Sabalenka reached 7 finals this year, winning 4 titles. Two of those titles were majors (Australian Open & US Open), and the other two were WTA 1000 titles (Cincinnati & Wuhan). She finished the season as the year-end world No. 1 for the first time in her career.

Other notable award-winners included:

ATP:

Comeback Player of the Year: Matteo Berrettini

Most Improved Player of the Year: Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard

Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award: Grigor Dimitrov 

Coach of the Year: Michael Russell (Taylor Fritz)

WTA:

Comeback Player of the Year: Paula Badosa

Most Improved Player of the Year: Emma Navarro

Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award: Ons Jabeur

Coach of the Year: Renzo Furlan (Jasmine Paolini)

What’s The Dill?

Welcome to the What’s The Dill portion of this week’s newsletter, brought to you by SuckerPunch! Every week we will feature the best question(s) asked on our “What’s The Dill” post which can be found under the Community tab on the Courtside Tennis YouTube channel.

This week’s question comes from @andreaakrapovic7554:

This fan wants to know what’s in store for Denis Shapovolov in 2025 after a strong finish to 2024.

Prior to the 2024 season, Shapovolov had not played since Wimbledon 2023 due to injury. He had a relatively underwhelming season up until a quarterfinal run at the 500-level event in Washington D.C. over the summer. However, the Canadian was defaulted in that match after allegedly swearing at a fan, completely halting the momentum he had built in that tournament.

Then, something finally clicked for Shapo at the Serbian Open in Belgrade in November. He came all the way from qualifying to lift the title, defeating 4 top 100 players along the way. There were glimpses of the play that got him into the top 10, which was very encouraging to see.

Denis has always been a feisty player with a HUGE amount of potential, but he has run into some tough situations between injuries, defaults, and bans that have halted his progress. 

The title in Serbia was only his 2nd career title, and made even more impressive given the fact that he was not having a good season at all. If he can stay healthy and avoid on-court outbursts, he has a really good chance to keep this momentum going. Deep runs at big events right away might be a stretch, but expect a more consistent season from the 25-year-old. 

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Highlights Of The Week

Check out some of the 2024 Shot of the Year candidates from the ATP & WTA Tours!

One Last Thing!

Once again, If you guys want your questions answered in next week’s newsletter check out the post in the Community tab of the Courtside Tennis YouTube channel. You can also email us, drop them in the discord, or leave a comment on our most recent Youtube video. Make sure to put Courtside Digest before the comment so that way we can find it more easily. Thanks!