With the start of the new year, the tennis cycle starts afresh.  It was only about 6 weeks ago that the last official ATP event was played, namely, the Davis Cup finals.  Since then, some players have used the extra time for exhibitions.  Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Juan Martin del Potro, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga were off in South America playing exhibitions.  Federer hadn’t been to the continent since before he was a pro over a decade ago.

Some people were already setting predictions for the Slams in 2013 back in November, but that’s more wishful thinking than anything else.  Such prognosticators want certain players to win a Slam, not that they’re the most realistic to win it.  And you never know whose form will suddenly explode like Juan Martin del Potro in 2008.

Clearly, the big news of 2013 is no Rafael Nadal, and all the top pros are relieved.  To be fair, Nadal probably wouldn’t have won the whole thing, but he’s good enough that you never know who he might upset along the way.

This is the first full week of tournaments and exhibitions.  There are four going on.  On the official tour, there’s Doha, where Ferrer is the top seed.  Doha normally attracts a top-notch draw.  In past years, they’ve attract Federer, Nadal, and Murray.  Three years ago, Murray decided to drop Doha from his schedule despite being very successful there.  Although Doha is played in the middle east which ought to be comparable in heat to Australia, all matches are played at night to avoid this heat, and it’s considerably cooler at night.

This year, Federer fell into a special rule that applies basically just to him.  Federer has been president of the ATP for some time, so he may very well have pushed the rules that would favor him as he gets older.  In particular, he’s no longer required to play any Masters 1000.  He can skip penalty-free.  This has to do with number of years he’s served on tour, number of match wins, and age.  In 2013, Federer has pruned his schedule back, and it may have to do with the guarantee money that tournaments are willing (or not, in this case) to pay him.  He’s even dropped his hometown tournament at Basel which may suggest money speaks louder than country loyalty.

It’s very unusual for Federer to head into a Slam without a warmup tournament.  The closest thing he’s done is to play a series of exhibitions in South America in late December.

Novak Djokovic, much like Andy Murray, has chosen to play in Australia to warm up for the first Slam of the year.  Two years ago, Djokovic showed up at the Hopman Cup, an exhibition that is played like a mini-Davis Cup.  Each of 8 invited countries brings one male and one female player.  They play two singles matches, then play mixed doubles.  Djokovic is playing with Ana Ivanovic once again.

Andy Murray played the Hopman Cup for two years, but last year, he decided to play an ATP tournament and went to Brisbane instead.  This year, he’s decided to play once again.  Murray chose to play the Abu Dhabi exhibition prior to this.  Normally, this tournament has Federer, Djokovic, and Nadal.  But this year, Federer wasn’t invited.  Instead, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray were supposed to headline.  When Nadal announced he had a stomach virus, he dropped out at this exhibition.  Federer was asked, but having been slighted, and perhaps having his schedule already set, he refused to play.  Murray lost right away to Janko Tipsarevic, so the tournament was really relying on Djokovic wanting to win, which he did.

Let’s look at each of the tournaments being played.

Doha

Doha has generally attracted the top players, but this year, David Ferrer is that top guy.  Last year, Federer, Nadal, Tsonga, and Monfils were the top seeds.  This year, it’s Ferrer, Gasquet, Kohlschreiber, and Youzhny.  The weak field has resulted 6 if the top 8 seeds being upset by the second round.  Richard Gasquet, the second seed, would have been the 7th, but managed to come back from a break down in the third set against Slovak, Grega Zemlja, in a tiebreak and stay in the tournament.  Ferrer is, of course, the class of the field, and he continues in 2013 where he left off in 2012, beating players he should beat.

Monfils is actually in this tournament, but due to injuries, he had not played much late in 2012, and so his ranking has dropped.  He is still in the tournament however, and with most of the seeds out, he remains the tournament’s bright spot.

Chennai

Chennai has a stronger field than usual with two top ten players in Tomas Berdych and Janko Tipsarevic.  The top 4 seeds are rounded out by Marin Cilic and Stanislas Wawrinka.  Defending champ, Milos Raonic, chose to play Brisbane this year, instead of defending his title.  Unlike Doha, where many of the seeds are already out, 6 of the top 8 seeds remain including all top 4 seeds.  To be fair, the top 4 seeds all got first round byes, so Berdych and Cilic have yet to play their first matches.

Last year, Berdych opted to play Hopman Cup in what amounted to a sweep for the Czech Republic in team play as they won Hopman Cup, Fed Cup, and Davis Cup, the first time that has ever happened.  This year, he’s playing a tournament.

Brisbane

Brisbane has the strongest field of the three official tournaments with Murray, Raonic, Simon, and Dolgopolov as the top 4 seeds.  This is the second year in a row that Murray has chosen to play Brisbane.  He is the defending champion.

Like most top players, Murray spent December training.  Ever since late 2007, Murray has trained in Miami.  Federer is known to train in Dubai while Nadal prefers to be in Spain.  It’s not clear where Djokovic prefers to train.  Some players, like Gilles Simon, train indoors, not worrying about the heat, although some players have opted to do bikram yoga, which is yoga in high heat to compensate for the lack of natural heat in wherever they are training.

For Murray, it’s hard to say what he’s worked on.  He lost immediately at Abu Dhabi, but 2012 showed Murray worried about being too tired heading into a Slam, so he’s strategically lost early in tournaments leading up early.  One wonders if he’ll try to win Brisbane or not, although if he expects to keep his ranking up, he’ll need to win some titles outside the Slam.

Roger Federer was able to claim number 1 by winning next tier tournaments.  In 2011, he won Basel, Paris, London, then in 2012 he won Rotterdam (a tournament he rarely plays), Dubai, Indian Wells, and Madrid.  All these wins gave him the shot at number 1 once he captured Wimbledon.  It was smart scheduling, plus playing well at the tournaments that he had to.

Murray doesn’t seem as robust as Federer, or for that matter, Ferrer.  2012 was the first year in some time that Murray failed to win a Masters 1000 title.  But given that he reached his first Wimbledon final and won his first US Open, he’ll take that instead.

All we know is that a poor performance by Murray doesn’t translate to bad performances in Slams.  Even so, it’s been 6 weeks since he played an official tournament, so he’s at least looking to winning a few matches just to make sure his game is sharp.

Hopman Cup

As the years go by, the Hopman Cup has attracted more talent.  While Federer and Nadal have yet to play here and are unlikely to do so in the future, they’ve attracted Djokovic and Murray in the past.  Novak Djokovic is back this year.  To join him, there’s Bernard Tomic (who played Brisbane last year) and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (who played Doha last year).

The big news, early on, is Bernard Tomic.  Tomic had a tumultuous 2012.  Although he started the year very well, making the fourth round at the Australian Open, he struggled the rest of the year both on and off the court.  He admitted that he coasted, probably on the strength of his good start.  He probably thought he could just win on talent.

In 2012, Tomic went to a very finesse oriented style of play, pushing slices, waiting for chances to hit a flat forehand down-the-line.  He almost didn’t get out of the first round with a feisty Fernando Verdasco and the Australian sun beating him down.  He managed to play longer rallies and rattle Verdasco’s confidence (alas, something that’s not hard to do) and win the match in 5 sets.  However, if Tomic learned anything from the loss to Federer, it’s that finesse can only carry you so far.

Federer had played Tomic in 2010 in Davis Cup on grass, and felt he had been lured to play Tomic’s style which Federer is perfectly capable of doing.  But Federer knows how to hit hard, and so in 2011, he chose not to exchange soft shots with Tomic and looked to pressure him with power.  Tomic had to grudgingly play more power shots, though it was more his style back in 2010.

This year, against Tommy Haas in the Hopman Cup, Tomic had to dig deep being down deep out of a 6-1 hole to win the first set tiebreak, then managed to break in the third set, and take the third set, also in a tiebreak.  But his big win has been against Novak Djokovic.  It was only a week ago, when Djokovic crushed David Ferrer in Abu Dhabi, that Djokovic felt his game was coming together a lot sooner than expected.  However, he did need 3 sets to beat Nicolas Almagro in the finals, and he lost to Bernard Tomic 64 64 in round robin play.

General Preview

If you had to judge 2013 by how 2012 ended, and that’s still not a bad way to go, then Novak Djokovic still has to be the favorite heading into the Australian Open.  He should have been devastated after losing Wimbledon in the semis to Roger Federer, then losing the semifinals in the Olympics to Andy Murray, then the bronze medal round to Juan Martin del Potro.

Instead, Djokovic dominated the second half of the year, something he has done historically well.  He won Toronto.  He got to the finals of Cincinnati.  Federer did pounce on him there, but it was a solid result.  He reached the finals of the US Open.  He won Beijing, then Shanghai.  Although he lost early in Paris (something all the top seeds except David Ferrer did), he won London, and finished the year as number 1.

In the process, he beat his main rivals in Roger Federer and Andy Murray.

Roger Federer is the big “what if”.  He’s pared down his schedule for the first time (now that he can do so without penalty).  He heads into the Australian Open without any warmup.  There are usually a few impromptu exhibitions just before the start of the Australian Open.   Bernard Tomic won one last year where he beat Mardy Fish and Gael Monfils.  There are even one-off matches that can be set up.  Federer has been able to take long periods of rest and come back solid, including his 2012 Toronto win, though he has been helped, in that case, by top seeds losing early which also occurred in Indian Wells.

Andy Murray ended 2012 solid, but saw both Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic getting key wins.  Just when everyone said Murray vs. Djokovic was the new Federer vs. Nadal, Murray ended the year without big wins against either player.  However, this will be the first year where he spent the training in Miami with Ivan Lendl, so they are likely to cook up some new shots for Murray to work on.  Lendl may have lost a step or two since he last played competitive tennis, but his mind is as sharp as ever.

So we head into the Australian Open unsure of who has the edge, but the current money is on Novak Djokovic, without any better information.

I do think that Bernard Tomic might be worth looking at again.  With personal issues affecting his play, many tennis enthusiasts felt that Tomic was going to plummet in 2013, but Tomic (and his father) know that, much like Jennifer Capriati, there’s not much Tomic can do outside of tennis, and he has the talent to do well.  Tomic may enjoy partying, but he is narcissistic enough to believe he can be a top player, and his tight wins suggest he may be on track to making some noise.  The bad news is he’ll be unseeded like he was last year, so he may end up with a bad first round match.  His hope is to play a low seed which he can knock out, then use the seed protection to avoid running into a top player by the third round.  Again, most of the trick for Tomic is getting out of the first round.