Sky Sports Tennis’ Gigi Salmon looks ahead to the 2026 Australian Open, revealing her tips to claim the titles and looking at each Brit’s draw in her latest column.
I’m writing this 35,000 feet up en route to the Happy Slam that got even happier this week when 29-year-old amateur Jordan Smith (although he did once have an ATP ranking) won the brilliant one-point slam together with a life-changing cheque for A$1m.
He came through a field of 48, taking out defending champion Jannik Sinner and two-time slam finalist Amanda Anisimova along the way.
The Grand Slams are always looking for ways to bring more people through the gates in what is now – for three of the four – ‘week 1’ of a three-week event on site.
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Sydney amateur Jordan Smith beat Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner on his way to claiming the $1m first prize at the one-point Slam
We saw recently at the US Open the revamped mixed doubles event that crowned the first Grand Slam champions before the main draw had even begun. In Melbourne, the one-point slam gives ‘regular’ people like you and me the chance to dream of taking to the court against the world’s best.
I also felt it detracted, or rather distracted from, the serious business of qualifying as I found myself scrolling through social media to find out who had made it to the showpiece stage of the event and how everyone was doing, rather than looking to see how things were looking in qualifying!
When I land in Melbourne, I will have around 36 hours to shake off the jet lag, get my bearings and pick up my accreditation before the main draw begins on Sunday morning local time. A similar turnaround to those players who are in the latter stages of the pre-Slam events.
First honours of the year have gone to Poland, headed up by world No 2 Iga Swiatek and the revived and back on tour again Hubey Hurkacz, who won the United Cup.
World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka, Elina Svitolina, Daniil Medvedev – with title No 22 in a 22nd different city – and Alexander Bublik, who by winning the title in Hong Kong also secured his place in the World’s top 10 for the first time in his career.
‘Sabalenka player to beat, no one is close to Sinner and Alcaraz’
So what are some of the questions that we have going into the first Grand Slam of 2026? Will Novak Djokovic win an 11th Australian Open title and win a record 25th Grand Slam singles title? Can Sabalenka pick up from where she left off in 2025 winning the US Open? Will Iga Swiatek find happiness and stability at the Happy Slam after a season of highs and lows?
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Novak Djokovic believes he can come out on top at the Australian Open as long as he remains healthy
The early signs for Sabalenka are good, claiming her 22nd career title and third in Brisbane.
The women’s event has a lot more jeopardy with more contenders for the top prize in a draw that has 11 Grand Slam champions, including five previous Australian Open champions. That’s five players who know what it’s like to win the first Grand Slam of the year – experience which is priceless.
I’m still undecided on the role that Elena Rybakina is going to play, as too many times I have tipped her for world domination only for her to go out with a whimper! Good friend and Sky Sports Tennis commentator Naomi Cavaday has gone for Naomi Osaka to win her third AO title and first Grand Slam title since winning at Melbourne Park in 2021. It’s not out of the question.
Osaka is relaxed, settled with her team, has moved back to IMG – leaving the agency Evolve she co-founded – and she knows what it’s like to win this title. I feel I could continue to write down the names of players who are in the mix, together with ones to watch and it would be a fairly long list which is what makes the women’s competition so intriguing, but without question on these courts Sabalenka is still the player to beat.
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Venus Williams discusses how excited she is to take part in her first Australian Open in five years
Back to Djokovic and his quest for history, he finds himself in Jannik Sinner’s half of the draw, and while his quarter on paper isn’t too bad – with a very good head-to-head against all the seeds in his section – the fact he has no warm-up events in his legs and is back into the best of five sets, it’s once again going to be tough and will continue to be so.
Will anyone break up the Grand Slam winning duopoly of Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz? The Italian starts as the two-time defending champion, while Alcaraz, with Juan Carlos Ferrero no longer by his side, is looking to complete the career Grand Slam. Both, like Djokovic, open up their seasons at Melbourne Park.
I haven’t come across anybody who thinks that anyone outside of the top two will win a major this year and maybe next year too, because they are so far ahead of everyone else. The chasing pack, who can still just about see them in the distance, don’t have the belief that on the biggest stage they can get the win!
‘Draw hasn’t been kind for Brits in Melbourne’
British involvement sees four British women in the main draw and three men, the same numbers that we had a year ago but the draw hasn’t been overly kind.
British No 1 Emma Raducanu will be looking to bounce back from her early exit as the top seed in Hobart to world No 204 Taylah Preston. As the 28th seed, she starts off against Mananchaya Sawangkaew of Thailand -the current world No 194, who is making her Grand Slam main draw debut, but is slated to run into world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka as early as the third round.
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Highlights as top seed Emma Raducanu is knocked out of the Hobart International
Sonay Kartal faces the 31st seed Anna Kalinskaya. Fran Jones has a good first round draw up against qualifier and world No 141 Linda Klimovicova – making her Grand Slam main draw debut – and Katie Boulter must have danced with delight when news came through that she wouldn’t need to navigate qualifying and was instead directly into the main draw, that was until the draw was made and out popped 10th seed and United Cup finalist who beat Swiatek in that final Belinda Bencic.
Katie Boulter avoided qualifying to go into the main draw, but faces a tough task vs Belinda Bencic
The British men are led by Cam Norrie, who thanks to a fantastic backend to 2025, got himself seeded for Australia and as the 26th seed, he will face the Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, who he has played and lost to once before – the final of Metz last year.
Jacob Fearnley, who hasn’t had the start to the year he would have wanted, has drawn tricky Pole Kamil Majchrzak, who reached the quarter-finals in Brisbane. And congratulations to Arthur Fery qualifying for his first Australian Open, only to draw the 20th seed Flavio Cobolli.
If you are just getting back into sport after the Christmas holidays and getting back to work and children back to school, a reminder that Jack Draper felt he wasn’t quite ready to put his body (and left arm) through best of five set battles and instead, all being well, he will make his return to action for GB in the Davis Cup, away to Norway in February.
‘Sinner and Anisimova to lift trophies’
Why does it mean so much to players to take their place in a Grand Slam main draw? Well, one very good reason is that the reward for getting on the starting blocks in Melbourne is A$150,000 (£75,000) – that’s up from A$132,000 last year. The total prize money has increased by 16 per cent from 2025 and the singles winners will walk away with A$4,150,000 (around £2.07m)
You might remember that last year I focused solely on covering the event for radio, having the year before been hired as ‘coach’ for former world no 5 Daniella Hantuchova, then promptly fired after missing a 7am practice. This year I didn’t realise that despite being thousands of miles away in the UK, I have already been hired and fired for missing Dani’s exhibition event the Kooyong Classic, so I wait to see when I collect my accreditation if I have been rehired!
I have really enjoyed always watching the season get underway on Sky Sports Tennis and I will report back from Melbourne. I believe the Sky Sports Tennis team’s predictions for who we think will finish in the respective ATP & WTA top 8s will make an appearance soon, but in terms of who walks away with Daphne and Norman in Melbourne I predicted in early December and will stick with what I said then: your champions will be Jannik Sinner and Amanda Anisimova.
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