Mpetshi Perricard Leads the Approach in Gamers to Look ahead to in 2025
Mensik, Andreeva and Badosa Prime the Listing
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 wish to know who can be dominating our TV screens, and holding up Grand Slam trophies, sooner or later. In any case, whoever rises to the highest will grow to be an essential determine in our lives for a very long time to return.
The 2024 season simply ended, which implies, in fact, that 2025 is nearly upon us—it begins in a bit of 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 usually come from nations just like the U.S. and Croatia, the place athletes develop lengthy and lean. Now France might have its personal variation on the kind, full with a bit of Gallic aptitude. Mpetshi Perricard, 21, is 6-foot-8, and he’s the state-of-the-art in serving right this moment. In 2024, he averaged a tour-leading 18 aces per match, and confirmed an uncanny potential to bomb them in on second serves as properly.
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 exhausting 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 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 mentioned after their three-set match in Shanghai in October. “We like enjoying one another, we elevate the extent once we face one another…I may see right this moment why he is without doubt one of the finest servers we’ve got within the recreation.”
At 6-foot-4, Mensik isn’t as tall as Mpetshi Perricard, however his serve is sort of as deadly; he put 17 aces previous Djokovic that day. Simply as essential, the remainder of his recreation 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 potential. 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 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, perhaps a bit of untimely. Andreeva was definitely proficient, 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 liable to teen meltdowns, they haven’t damage her as a lot as I assumed they’d. At 17, her peak—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 virtually did the identical to Iga Swiatek in Cincinnati. Towards Sabalenka, she mentioned 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 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 Prime 10 potential. With Badosa, we already know she will 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 planet, 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 12 months slowly, she steadily 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 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?