Mpetshi Perricard Leads the Approach in Gamers to Look ahead to in 2025
Mensik, Andreeva and Badosa Prime the Record
Singling out “gamers to look at for” at the beginning of a brand new season is a tough enterprise. When 2024 started, did anybody have Jasmine Paolini making two main finals, or Taylor Fritz passing Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev within the rankings?
But hypothesis springs everlasting on this sport. We need to know who will probably be dominating our TV screens, and holding up Grand Slam trophies, sooner or later. In any case, whoever rises to the highest will change into an necessary determine in our lives for a very long time to come back.
The 2024 season simply ended, which suggests, in fact, that 2025 is sort of upon us—it begins in a little bit greater than three weeks. Who’re the gamers you’ll be seeing extra of within the new 12 months? Right here’s a have a look at two males and two girls who confirmed promise over the previous 12 months.
*****
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard
Servebots sometimes come from international locations just like the U.S. and Croatia, the place athletes develop lengthy and lean. Now France might have its personal variation on the sort, full with a little bit Gallic aptitude. Mpetshi Perricard, 21, is 6-foot-8, and he’s the state-of-the-art in serving in the present day. In 2024, he averaged a tour-leading 18 aces per match, and confirmed an uncanny capacity to bomb them in on second serves as nicely.
Maybe not shocking for an ultra-aggressive rookie, GMP’s 2024 was wildly uneven. He gained a title on clay in Lyon, and one on indoor onerous court docket in Basel, and made the spherical of 16 on grass at Wimbledon and Queen’s Membership. However he additionally misplaced eight first-round matches.
By season’s finish, Mpetshi Perricard had landed at a career-high No. 30. He had additionally proven off flashes of opportunistic brilliance together with his forehand, one-handed backhand, and reflex return. Sufficient to make him extra watchable, and certain extra profitable, than the servebots of the previous.
*****
Jakub Mensik
As the top of the sport’s nascent participant union, the PTPA, Novak Djokovic is at all times looking out for younger expertise. He has lengthy seen it on this 19-year-old Czech.
“Jakub is someone that I’ve been following for the final three or 4 years,” Djokovic stated after their three-set match in Shanghai in October. “We like enjoying one another, we increase the extent after we face one another…I may see in the present day why he is among the finest servers we’ve within the sport.”
At 6-foot-4, Mensik isn’t as tall as Mpetshi Perricard, however his serve is almost as deadly; he put 17 aces previous Djokovic that day. Simply as necessary, the remainder of his sport is extra persistently bruising. He hits a heavy ball together with his topspin forehand and two-handed backhand, and likes to make rallies as bodily as attainable. Mensik hasn’t gained a title or made it previous the third spherical at a significant but, however he completed 2024 at a career-high No. 48. Much more so than Mpetshi Perricard, he has loads of time to go greater.
*****
Mirra Andreeva
In Madrid within the spring of 2023, a 15-year-old Andreeva turned the third-youngest participant to win a match at a WTA 1000. The response from the tennis world was explosive—and, I assumed on the time, perhaps a little bit untimely. Andreeva was actually gifted, however her forehand and her composure each wanted a great deal of work.
It seems that I ought to have believed the hype. The younger Russian’s forehand rapidly improved, and whereas she’s nonetheless susceptible to teen meltdowns, they haven’t damage her as a lot as I assumed they’d. At 17, her top—she’s 5-foot-9—her two-handed backhand, and her fierce competitiveness and perception are already an excessive amount of for many opponents. In 2024, that almost included the WTA’s Prime 2: Andreeva upset Aryna Sabalenka at Roland Garros, and nearly did the identical to Iga Swiatek in Cincinnati. In opposition to Sabalenka, she stated she forgot what her techniques had been as quickly because the match began, however that didn’t appear to harm her both.
Andreeva completed a career-high No. 16 final season. With two years underneath her belt, and veteran Slam-winning coach Conchita Martinez in her nook—and hopefully reminding her of her sport plan—the ceiling ought to solely proceed to rise for her in 2025.
*****
Paula Badosa
The three gamers I discussed above would all appear to have Prime 10 potential. With Badosa, we already know she will get there, as a result of she has accomplished it earlier than. Within the spring of 2022, she was ranked as excessive as No. 2 on this planet, earlier than accidents and well-publicized anxieties despatched her sport plummeting.
Lastly, in 2024, the 27-year-old Spaniard bottomed out and commenced to rebuild. After beginning the 12 months slowly, she step by step went deeper at tournaments. She made the spherical of 16 at Wimbledon, gained the title in D.C., made the semis in Cincinnati, the quarters on the US Open, and the semis in Beijing and Ningbo. That left her at No. 12 to complete the 12 months, well-poised to make a leap into the Prime 10, or greater, in 2025.
Badosa can nonetheless get down on herself, however her sport stays a clean mixture of offense and protection that transitions nicely from floor to floor. She was one of many gamers who appeared cursed by her look within the Netflix documentary, Break Level. Can she be the one to interrupt that curse in 2025?
