Australian Open 2017 draw analysis: Djokovic and Murray on yet another collision course

With preparations for the first Grand Slam of the year at the Australian Open in full swing, the tournament has now released draws for its players. Here's a look at how kind or otherwise the draw has been for each of the top four seeds:

Headliner: Andy Murray

World No. 1 Andy Murray, the top seed here, will open against Ilya Marchenko of Ukraine. The 29-year-old Marchenko is currently ranked 93rd, and they have played each other only once before, with Murray taking a thorough, and clinical straight sets victory.

Incidentally, that match was almost five years ago to the day and played in the Round of 64 at the 2011 Australian Open.

It looks to be a relatively easy road for Murray, especially given his consistent form this year. Following Marchenko, he will face 61^st ranked Yen-hsun Lu, whom he has defeated the last four times the two faced off, most recently at Wimbledon last year.

While Lu has taken one victory, that came nearly a decade ago at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, with the Taiwanese player winning then in straight sets.

In Round 3, Murray will face the big-serving American Sam Querrey, who in the 2016 season was responsible for perhaps its biggest Grand Slam upset – the third-round, two-day, five-set dismissal of then World No. 1 and defending champion Novak Djokovic. Although Murray holds a firm upper hand here, his last win over the powerful server came at the 2014 Davis Cup, with the Scot labouring to a four-set win.

Next up, he is due to face young French sensation Lucas Pouille. Last year, Pouille impressed tennis watchers and rose quickly up the rankings. At 22-years-old, Pouille is already ranked 16^th in the world and poised for great things.

The 2016 season saw Pouille match, and then outplay, Rafael Nadal perhaps stroke for stroke at the US Open, steamrolling him in the first set and eventually taking a gruelling 3-hour victory over the Spaniard.

But Pouille has never taken victory over Andy Murray before.

The two have played each other only three times before, with all three of those matches in the 2016 season. Each of those matches has been at an ATP Masters tournament, and each time, it is Murray who has either bagelled, or breadsticked his opponent.

Despite Pouille’s resurgence, Murray’s strong track record should see him easily through.

It is in the quarter-finals that Murray will begin to see proper opposition. He will likely be up against Kei Nishikori, who has never been an easy opponent for the Scot. The last time the two met at the Grand Slam level, it was Nishikori who won – at the quarter-finals of the 2016 US Open, with the Japanese ace widely lauded for a brilliant five-set effort against the consistent Scot.

Even at Murray’s last showdown against Nishikori, at the ATP World Tour Finals in London, Nishikori looked dangerously threatening, scalping a set off Murray to begin the match, although he eventually lost.

A win at the quarter-final stage could see Murray face former Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka, who, despite his patchy form, has been consistently at the top of the rankings and has the ability to fire incredibly at the Grand Slam level.

Wawrinka is fresh off a Grand Slam win himself – his third title, at the 2016 US Open, and will be high on confidence and refreshed after the off-season break – no doubt making him a force to contend with.

Should he able to navigate his opponents effectively through the tournament, he will set up the much-vaunted final against Novak Djokovic – a repeat of 2016, but Murray will doubtless want different results this time around.

Novak Djokovic

For all his skill and form, Novak Djokovic has been handed a difficult opponent straight to begin his Grand Slam. He will be up against famed "giant-killer” Fernando Verdasco, who gave him a solid contest to begin the 2017 season in Doha. Scalping a set off the Serb at the semi-finals of the ATP250 tournament, Verdasco almost won the second in a tiebreak that saw Djokovic struggle to take control.

Last year, Verdasco was responsible for Rafael Nadal’s earliest ever Grand Slam edit, when he ousted his compatriot in Round 1 at the tournament.

It will be a tough start for Djokovic, but one that, should he overcome, will give him a breather for the next couple of rounds. He will likely set up a second round meeting with Denis Istomin and then with Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta, should all go according to plan. Then, Djokovic will begin to see tough opponents – Sydney winner Grigor Dimitrov, who appears to be enjoying a resurgence in form and Dominic Thiem, who many have touted as a future No. 1.

In the semi-finals Djokovic will see perhaps his biggest challenge till then – in Milos Raonic, who last year made his Grand Slam finals debut against Andy Murray at Wimbledon. The Canadian, who has had numerous injury struggles in the past, has seen a deep purple patch of form in recent months, has however never beaten Djokovic in their past eight meetings.

Of course, a victory there would pave the way for yet another Novak Djokovic – Andy Murray final, as watchers have so often seen in past years, this time with prestige on the line for both Murray and Djokovic, albeit for different reasons entirely.

Milos Raonic

Form, fitness and finals – Milos Raonic has found them all in the 2016 season, competing deep into Tour level tournaments, slams and maintaing a steady level of gameplay and consistency.

From his draw, Raonic looks as though he should easily be able to progress to the semi-finals. He will start off facing the athletic German Dustin Brown, followed by Frenchmen Gilles Muller and Gilles Simon, after which he is projected to play Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut in the pre-quarter-finals.

Raonic’s quarter-final will, in that case, be against the mercurial Frenchman Gael Monfils, who has been in excellent nick as far as his game is concerned but has found no consistency in his work. Monfils is also infamous for being injury-prone, and last year also appeared to throw his US Open match against Novak Djokovic. Given Monfils’ unpredictable nature, Raonic will likely make easy work of the quarter-final.

In that event, he will set up a semi-final clash with defending champion Novak Djokovic.The Canadian has never beaten the Serb in the eight matches the two have played against each other, but at their most recent meeting, at the year-ending ATP World Tour Finals in London, Raonic seriously troubled Djokovic, who had then been struggling wtih form, to a two-set tiebreak match that largely teetered on the brink.

The last time the pair met at the Grand Slam level was at the 2015 Australian Open, with Djokovic winning their quarter-final showdown in straight sets, although the first of those went to tiebreak.

In the improbable event that Raonic wins that, he will set up a repeat of Wimbledon 2016 – a final against Andy Murray.

Stan Wawrinka

The talented Swiss, a mainstay of the top tennis ranks, has had patchy, erratic form on occasion – but proven himself time and again, winning Slam titles on every surface except Wimbledon. Last year, Wawrinka played exceptional tennis at Flushing Meadows to defeat Juan Martin del Potro and then go on to take a spectacular win against Novak Djokovic, all the while displaying no dip in stamina, to win the 2016 US Open.

It is that fitness and endurance that has stood Wawrinka, now a three-time Grand Slam champion, in good stead, and is something he can take confidence from.

Wawrinka will start off against Martin Klizan (who has had a stutter in form recently) and the big-serving American Steve Johnson, followed by Viktor Troicki, whom he has never lost to before, but it is the pre-quarter-finals that could truly trouble him. There, he will meet tennis bete-noire and perhaps his own nemesis, the mercurial Nick Kyrgios.

The young Australian is considered by many players – among them John McEnroe, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray – as immensely talented, but struggling with psychological issues that have held him back in terms of career success. Indeed, the perhaps prodigiously talented Kyrgios, who, despite the absence of a full-time coach last year won his first ATP Tour level title in Japan, has detracted from his own career achievements with a streak of unsportsmanlike behaviour that has seemed to become his trademark.

Kyrgios beat Wawrinka at the pair’s most recent meeting – at the clay court Madrid Masters last year, in straight sets, although each of those sets went to tiebreak. The pair’s record, however, is dead even at two wins apiece in their four match rivalry, which, given Kyrgios’ behaviour at the Montreal Masters in 2015, has become heightened in light of the Australian’s language.

Should he be able to beat Kyrgios, Wawrinka will see a projected semi-final against World No. 1 Andy Murray, another potentially interesting contest. Murray leads the pair’s head-to-head record at 10-7, but Wawrinka has successfully been a thorn in the Scot’s side on multiple occasions, taking matches to tiebreaks and fights.