Today we got familiar with the shape of draws for both WTA 500 and ATP 250 season opener tournaments in Adelaide. Despite the fact, that both fields are insanely strong for those ranges of tournaments, some duels created during the draw are in-fact suprising as the R1 matchups.
Danielle Collins will start her 2023 campaign in an absolute cracker agains current Wimbledon title holder - Elena Rybakina. The American wants refer to the last year's super successful Australian campaign, when she earned her maiden Grand Slam final appearance. Danielle is seeded with number #5, but it did not prevent her from the neccesity of facing Rybakina, who was without a doubt the most danger pick for the seeds. Nevertheless, Collins proved a few times, that she feels great in Australia, advancing to the SF in Melbourne in 2019, or achieving advanced stages of Australian Summer tournaments in previous years. Danielle being in her good shape is capable of beating just anyone on any surface, especially on her favourite hard courts.
While this match will take place possibly on Monday 2nd of January, tomorrow will bring the very interesting centre-court opening match between Bianca Andreescu and Garbine Muguruza. Both very titled players want to make 2023 their breakthrough year after though 2022 marked whether coming back after health issues (Andreescu) or lacklustre performance during the whole year (Muguruza). Jelena Ostapenko vs Karolina Pliskova is also a match worth to observe in WTA 500 R1.
ATP field is even more stacked besides the lower range (250) with the names like Djokovic, Medvedev or Auger-Alliasime on the card. This draw however did not bring hit clashes at the very begining apart from the interesting match between Roberto Bautista Agut and Andrey Rublev.
