Australian Open 1996

1995, it was a year of amazing dominance of three players: Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Thomas Muster. When the Australian Open ’96 kicked off, it seemed almost impossible that the trophy would lift someone else than one of these three guys, however, Sampras faced an opponent who played a match of his life, Agassi and Muster suffered slight leg injuries in Australia (off and on court) which eventually led to their failures, and none representative of the Big 3 managed to advance to the final. Boris Becker was a man taking advantage of it – the German came to Melbourne not having won a Grand Slam title in 5 years, he had not even won a match at the Australian Open since 1993. In the first two rounds he barely escaped defeats to relatively unknown young guys at the time (Greg Rusedski & Thomas Johansson), but survived in 5-setters, and since then delivered the most comprehensive tennis of his career to the very end. Read more…

Next major (Wimbledon ’88) will be added after the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.