Lyneham ACT 2602, Australia, 7 February 2017 | Todd Larkham

Record crowds at the Australian Open 2017, one of the most watched tennis matches in the sports history in the men’s final and another highly successful Challenger event in Canberra, the East Hotel Canberra Challenger. What a fantastic month for tennis in Australia and ACT athlete development.

Canberra’s James Frawley has made a solid return to elite tennis after completing a four year finance degree at the University of Canberra qualifying for the East Hotel Canberra Challenger. Former junior world No.42, James has pounced back onto the pro tennis scene, qualifying for three Challenger Tour events in a row, winning nine matches along the way. The 22-year-old started 2017 ranked 1930 in the world and is now ranked inside the top 1,000 – ready, willing and able to embark on his first full year of pro tennis.

Nick Kyrgios had a successful start to the year with good wins at the Hopman Cup. Whilst he and his Aussie partner Daria Gavrilova didn’t defend their title this year, he won all three of his singles matches and then his Fast4 Tennis match against world No.6 Rafael Nadal (ESP) in Sydney.

Unfortunately Nick was defeated in a tight five set second round battle against Italian Andreas Seppi at the Australian Open 2017 [AO] before returning to help Australia win their first round of Davis Cup 2017 against the Czech Republic 5-1. Australia will host the Davis Cup quarterfinals in April on home soil against the United States.

Joining Nick at the AO was local player Alison Bai who partnered Lizette Cabrera (QLD) holding a doubles wildcard. The duo lost a very tight contest in the first round and played a great match.

In the junior AO events, Canberra had three representatives including Lisa Mays, Kaitlin Staines and Annerly Poulos. Whilst all lost in the first round, both Kaitlin and Annerly had very close three set matches and were in winning positions. All juniors gained a great deal from their experience, including playing in front of large crowds and are expected to return in 2018.

At the lead up event to the AO Kaitlin reached the doubles final at the G1 Loy Yang Junior event in Traralgon, whilst Annerly took her good form into the ACT Gold AMT women’s event where she beat several players ranked higher than her, to take out the singles event.

In junior tennis, highlights from January include:

Ellie Koundouris – runner-up Wakehurst Junior Open and semi-finals B and E Resny Junior Open

Ash Simes – doubles winner Wodonga Gold junior event

Jimmy Fu – semi–finals Vic Junior Grass Champs

Sam Bisa – semi–finals North East Junior Classic

Charlie Camus – doubles winner Goulburn Valley Junior Open

Madison Sutherland – Runner–up B and E Resny Junior Open

Tallulah Farrow – semi–finals singles and runner-up doubles of Macquarie Uni AMT

Lean Williamson – runner-up of doubles Macquarie Uni AMT

Jack Lyons – semi–finals of Nepean Summer Junior Open

Kaitlin Staines – semi–finals x 2 Platinum AMT events and runner-up doubles

Lisa Mays – 2 x runner-up doubles Platinum AMT events.