Mpetshi Perricard Leads the Method in Gamers to Look ahead to in 2025
Mensik, Andreeva and Badosa High the Record
Singling out “gamers to observe for” at first 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 shall be dominating our TV screens, and holding up Grand Slam trophies, sooner or later. In any case, whoever rises to the highest will turn out to be an vital determine in our lives for a very long time to come back.
The 2024 season simply ended, which implies, after all, that 2025 is nearly upon us—it begins in somewhat greater than three weeks. Who’re the gamers you’ll be seeing extra of within the new yr? Right here’s a have a look at two males and two ladies who confirmed promise over the previous 12 months.
*****
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard
Servebots usually 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 somewhat Gallic aptitude. Mpetshi Perricard, 21, is 6-foot-8, and he’s the state-of-the-art in serving as we speak. In 2024, he averaged a tour-leading 18 aces per match, and confirmed an uncanny capability to bomb them in on second serves as properly.
Maybe not shocking for an ultra-aggressive rookie, GMP’s 2024 was wildly uneven. He received a title on clay in Lyon, and one on indoor onerous courtroom 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 along 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 pinnacle 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 any person 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 taking part in one another, we increase the extent once we face one another…I might see as we speak why he is likely one of the greatest servers we have now within the recreation.”
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 vital, the remainder of his recreation is extra constantly bruising. He hits a heavy ball along with his topspin forehand and two-handed backhand, and likes to make rallies as bodily as doable. Mensik hasn’t received a title or made it previous the third spherical at a serious but, however he completed 2024 at a career-high No. 48. Much more so than Mpetshi Perricard, he has loads of time to go increased.
*****
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, possibly somewhat 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 shortly improved, and whereas she’s nonetheless susceptible to teen meltdowns, they haven’t damage her as a lot as I assumed they might. 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 just about included the WTA’s High 2: Andreeva upset Aryna Sabalenka at Roland Garros, and virtually did the identical to Iga Swiatek in Cincinnati. In opposition to Sabalenka, she stated she forgot what her techniques have 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 below her belt, and veteran Slam-winning coach Conchita Martinez in her nook—and hopefully reminding her of her recreation 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 High 10 potential. With Badosa, we already know she will be able to get there, as a result of she has performed it earlier than. Within the spring of 2022, she was ranked as excessive as No. 2 on the earth, earlier than accidents and well-publicized anxieties despatched her recreation plummeting.
Lastly, in 2024, the 27-year-old Spaniard bottomed out and commenced to rebuild. After beginning the yr slowly, she regularly went deeper at tournaments. She made the spherical of 16 at Wimbledon, received 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 yr, well-poised to make a leap into the High 10, or increased, in 2025.
Badosa can nonetheless get down on herself, however her recreation stays a clean mixture of offense and protection that transitions properly 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?
