Two wishes for the 2025 Australian Open

The disgustingly long tennis off-season is over after an arduous 30 days and we're back in Australia. Beautiful nights of staying up until 4 am watching our faves lose in heartbreaking fashion then waking up as a zombie the next day are upon us, and it's pure bliss. We all have our wishlist for the first slam of the year, and here are my absolutely realistic (truly) wishes for the Australian Open.

Emma Raducanu makes Quarterfinals (at least)

This was actually going to be the "Elena Rybakina wins the Australian Open" wish, but all the drama with Vukic has soured me on her a bit, so we're back to praying for the fragile Queen of England.

Emma's had a predictable start to the year with a withdrawal at Auckland, and the naysayers are louder than ever. Nothing sweeter to shut them up than a deep run at the first slam of the year setting up a ranking high enough to get rid of the "welfare queen" allegations from her liberal use of wildcards. Talent wise she's easily capable, and she's shown a newfound resilience in her 2024 matches, especially in beating Pegula. This is wishful thinking, but I think it's more realistic than some cynics believe.

Holger Rune finally makes his breakthrough at slams

Breakthrough meaning a final appearance at least. Sadly I have no precedence to back this up other than "feels". Rune is coming off a down year and Australian Open likely is his worst slam, but I think The ceiling he once showed is still there and it takes a level of mental maturity and feel for the match he hasn't quite reached for Rune to play at that level consistently. This year he will. It's going to be his coming out year, and it starts in Sydney.