Five things to watch for on AO Day 2: Gauff goes through the motion, Djokovic drives for 25

The first Sunday at the Australian Open brought us its share of interesting and surprising results. Venus Williams lost a close one, Flavio Cobolli lost a not-so-close one, Carlos Alcaraz won without Juan Carlos Ferrero, a young American, Michael Zheng, stunned his countryman Seb Korda, and one of my dark horses, Marta Kostyuk, made an early exit.

Still, opening Sundays at the Slams are appetizers. The first main course, with a larger selection of matches, arrives on Monday. This is especially intriguing in Australia, where players are not just starting a Slam, they’re kicking off their 2026 campaigns in earnest.

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New kits, new haircuts, new bodies, new coaches, new attitudes, maybe even a new stroke: We’ll get a first look at several big names on Monday in Melbourne (Sunday night in the States). Here are five things to watch for:

Coco Goes Through the Motion

By motion, I mean service motion, of course. That’s what we’ll all be scrutinizing and dissecting as Gauff begins her first Slam of 2026. She spent the off-season working on it with serve specialist Gavin MacMillan. We got our first peak at the result during United Cup, and the motion looked a little more fluid than before—though the double faults hadn’t completely disappeared. The shot may never be flawless; the goal may always be to manage it and not let it torpedo the rest of her game.

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Coco and her serve will be first up in Laver, against 91st-ranked Kamilla Rakhimova. Gauff, who made the semis and the quarters the last two years in Melbourne, won their only meeting, last fall in Beijing, 6-4, 6-0.

Amanda Tries Not to Slow Her Roll

Can we say that a 24-year-old player who has been on tour for eight years is trying to avoid a sophomore slump? It kind of feels that way in the case of Amanda Anisimova. Last season, when she jumped from No. 36 to No. 4, felt like the start of a new and much better career for her. Now that she’s climbed the mountain, she’ll have the equally tough task of defending her position there against all comers.

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So far, Anisimova hasn’t seemed fazed by her newfound success and fame. She only got better and more self-assured as 2025 progressed. But she did lose early, to Kostyuk, in her first event of 2026, in Brisbane. On Monday she’ll try to show she’s a reliable big-stage player now. She’s second up on Margaret Court Arena, against 25-year-old, 86th-ranked Simona Waltert of Switzerland. They’ve never played.

Alex Gathers Her Army

Few players ranked 49th in the world have ever had a fanbase as loyal and noisy as Alex Eala’s. Wherever the 20-year-old goes, her Filipino supporters follow—and yell. That’s what happens when you’re the first professional tennis player of note from a country of 112 million, with many thousands of expatriates spread around the world.

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Not surprisingly, the Melbourne metropolitan area has its share of those expats, and I’d expect them to fill Court 6 when Eala makes her Australian Open main-draw debut against Alycia Parks of the U.S. during the day session.

The two have never played, but we can be pretty sure they’ll engage in a slugfest from the start; neither tends to hold back on any stroke, at any time. Because of that, I’m also guessing that the match will have its share of violent momentum swings, as each woman finds, and loses, her range. Eala started strong in her opening week, making the semis in Auckland.

Mirra Takes a Test

If Mirra Andreeva were an everyday American teen, she would be finishing high school this spring. Instead, the 18-year-old Russian star-in-the-making will be taking a different type of test on Monday. She’ll face a potentially tough opening-round foe in Donna Vekic. At 29, the Croat’s ranking is down to 72, and she has hinted that she’ll be retiring sooner rather than later. But she’s also an Olympic silver medalist and Wimbledon semifinalist who pushed Andreeva to 6-4 in the third set in their only meeting.

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Beyond this match, Andreeva faces the test of reclaiming her early-season confidence and momentum from 2025. When she beat Aryna Sabalenka in the Indian Wells final and rose into the Top 10 last spring, it looked as if her maiden Slam title might be just months away. Instead of showing off her talent the rest of the way, though, she showed her age, as the relentlessness of the season caught up with her. In the end, she failed even to qualify for the WTA Finals.

If any player needed an off-season recharge, it was Andreeva. And she seems to have gotten one: She’s 6-1 to start the year, and she won the title in Adelaide last week without dropping a set.

Novak Drives for 25

Once upon a time, Novak Djokovic said he never set any limits on what he could accomplish. And that attitude worked for him—he has broken just about every record that was there to break. At 38, though, he sounds like he’s dialing back his expectations just a bit.

“24 is not a bad number,” Djokovic says he has been telling himself lately. The 24 in that sentence refers to the major titles he’s won, the most of any male player, and tied for the most all-time with Margaret Court. The implication is that he may not get to 25—i.e., he may finally have hit a limit.

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Will this more relaxed and realistic approach help Djokovic in what may be his final go-round on tour? We’ll start to find out when he takes to Rod Laver Arena for his first-round night match against 20-year-old Pedro Martinez.

The Spaniard is ranked 71st, and his only career title came on clay. But he has been as high as 36th, and he plays with the type of Spanish-style grit and consistency that tends to translate to all surfaces. Unless he’s overwhelmed by the occasion, he’ll make the 38-year-old hit a lot of balls to win.

Djokovic probably won’t mind testing his legs, but he won’t want to work them for too long. He needs to be as efficient as possible, and conserve every ounce of energy he can if wants to be ready for the bigger tests ahead.