Catching Up Down Under

After a stormy opening two days, calm returned to Melbourne Park on Wednesday—you know things went according to form when a Petra Kvitova loss was the day's biggest shocker. While we have a moment of respite, here’s a quick look back at what we’ve seen and heard so far in Melbourne.

A scoop as speculative as the BBC/Buzzfeed’s on match-fixing in tennis can only grow. With few specifics, there’s nothing to stop conjecture. On Wednesday, a list of 15 players that Buzzfeed—not the tennis authorities—believed had been involved in matches with suspicious gambling patterns is making its way around the Internet. At the same time, Novak Djokovic was asked about a match he allegedly “threw” to Fabrice Santoro in 2007.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as we follow this story over the next days and weeks:

—Match-fixing in tennis is real, and has been in the news for at least a decade. There was a similarly speculative list of possible suspects passed around the Internet a few years ago, and the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has suspended or banned seven players for engaging in it.

—The TIU, along with the ITF’s anti-doping unit, has been criticized for a lack of transparency, and they can be frustratingly closed-mouthed about what they do and who they’re targeting. At the same time, they can’t disclose players’ names based solely on suspicions.

—“Tanking” is not the same as throwing a match for money.

—As has been noted this week, the optics of having tournaments sponsored by gambling sites isn’t ideal—or even good. But Andy Roddick had it right in his response on Twitter: It’s still up to the players to play the game straight. While legal gambling sites obviously increase betting on tennis, they also have an interest in preventing match-fixing.

—Others have mentioned the lack of prize money at Challenger events as a cause. Pay needs to rise at that level; it has remained largely unchanged for many years. But it can’t be used as an excuse to throw matches, either. Raising pay to discourage match-fixing is akin to giving everyone an allowance so we’re not tempted to rob a bank.

—The BBC/Buzzfeed story is vague, it may be old, and it has already hurt tennis’ reputation. But if it makes it harder for players and gamblers to fix matches in the future, it will have served a purpose.

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That would be Taylor Fritz, the 18-year-old Californian who came back from 0-4 down in the third set of his final qualifying match to reach his first Australian Open main draw. There, the next great hope of American tennis pushed the current great hope of American tennis, Jack Sock, to a fifth set. Not a bad effort.

This was the first time I’d watched Fritz for an extended period. There were things to like: He’s 6’4”; he has a clean-cut appeal; and he doesn’t appear to be a hothead, an egomaniac, or a sulky teen. Fritz’s mother, Kathy May, is a former player, and with his lanky, laid-back style, he seems to have the game in his genes. While he lost to Sock, he didn’t have any trouble matching up with him from the baseline. Fritz, who has already had success at the Challenger level, moves the ball around intelligently.

There will be questions, of course. What kind of an athlete is Fritz? There’s no doubt about Sock’s speed and forehand power, but I can’t say I saw Fritz move the same way, or show off an all-purpose weapon. He didn’t hit any jaw-dropping forehands, and for someone so tall, he doesn’t have a bomb serve.

Yet. It’s obviously still early for Fritz, and Andy Murray, for one, didn’t have any obvious killer weapons when he was 18, either. All I can say for now is that Fritz looks like a player, and a person, who it won’t be hard to root for.

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Speaking of young Americans to root for...

After watching top U.S. junior Noah Rubin lose in the first round at Flushing Meadows in 2014, I wrote that, at 5'10 and less than 150 pounds, he faced an uphill battle on the pro tour. He still does, but since then the New York native has made more progress than I would expected after a year at Wake Forest. He earned a main-draw wild card into the Australian Open and upset 17th seed Benoit Paire in the first round, before losing in straight sets to another Frenchman, Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Rubin will never overpower his opponents, but his speed and his attitude were impressive. Unlike many more talented players, Rubin is going to get the most out what he has, and that alone should make him worth watching.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for Paire, who claimed that he had lost to a "not good" opponent, simply because he had played worse. Let's hope that Rubin will make the most of that bulletin-board material, too.

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Two years ago, Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard looked like the future of women’s tennis; this year they won a total of one match at the Australian Open. Coming into this season, Venus Williams appeared ready to scale the Slam mountain again; she also lost in the first round in Melbourne. Two weeks ago in Auckland, Sloane Stephens won the title and appeared ready to right what had looked like a sinking career ship. Not so fast: Stephens was beaten, in routine fashion, by the world No. 102 in her Aussie opener.

Yet for every disappointment, and every future that doesn’t come to pass, a Grand Slam gives us a new player to watch and wonder about. So far in Australia, Kiki Mladenovic and Daria Gavrilova have caught the eye. Now they’ll face each other in the third round.

On Wednesday night, Gavrilova, a Russian who makes her home in Australia, upset Kvitova 6-4, 6-4 in front of a happy late-night crowd in Margaret Court Arena. Gavrilova, at 5’5”—is she really that tall?—is universally described as “feisty,” and she was at her animated best in front of the home crowd. She talked between points, laughed at herself, flipped her ponytail around, covered her mouth after a terrible shot, and generally let the world know how she was feeling at all times. What Gavrilova lacks in power—and she lacks plenty—she makes up for in spirit. Sometimes, perhaps, a little too much spirit. Asked why she let a second-set lead slip, Gavrilova explained it this way:

“Yeah, I was getting frustrated with myself. Just started thinking way too much of, I don’t know, whatever.”

Last year, Gavrailova climbed 197 ranking spots; Mladenovic can’t say quite the same thing—she only jumped 52, to No. 29—but the Frenchwoman seems poised to climb some more. A long and lean six-footer, Mladenovic serves and hits with flat power, and, perhaps like Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci before her, she has begun to use her doubles success—she has won 12 titles with a variety of partners—as a springboard, confidence-wise, for singles. With Kvitova out, Mladenovic has a path to the second week, a path that must first go through Gavrilova.

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Does this pattern sound familiar?

Reads tweets about Fabio Fognini having a meltdown somewhere

Shakes head and rolls eyes in exasperated disgust

Changes channel to Fognini match

It's already happened to me once this week. What are the chances it doesn't happen again?