Guillaume Issner, Media365, published on Sunday January 5, 2025 at 10:02 a.m.
The past tennis season, on the ATP and WTA circuits, allowed some to prove themselves at the highest level while others made a remarkable comeback. They will be followed in 2025.
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (21 years old) will be one of the players to follow in 2025. Very efficient in serving due to his size (2.03m), the Frenchman made a dazzling progression in the ranking, going from 205th to 31st place between January 1 and end of season. In 2024, Mpetshi Periccard won his first titles in Lyon and Basel, while reaching the round of 16 at Wimbledon. In the next exercise, another French player will be worth keeping an eye on: Arthur Son (20 years old), entered this year in the top 20. Titled at the ATP 500 in Hamburg and Tokyo, he also reached the second week of Wimbledon.
The return of Lucas Pouille?
The American Alex Michelsen (20 years old, 41st in the world) and Jakub Mensik (19 years old, 48th in the world) also intend to confirm. Michelsen played his first two finals on the main circuit, lost in Newport and Winston-Salem, when Mensik gained more than 100 positions in the rankings. The Czech, finalist in Doha and winner of Andrey Rublev and Grigor Dimitrov in October in Shanghai, reached the quarter-finals of this Masters 1000 on Chinese soil. A third Frenchman will be followed next year in the person of Lucas Pouille. In 2024, he won two of the five Challenger finals he played in and reached the third round of Wimbledon. The former world number 10 jumped more than 200 places to find himself just outside the top 100 and thus obtain an invitation to the main draw of the next Australian Open (January 12-26).
Osaka on the relaunch
At 30, Pouille will want to confirm his return to form as the former world number 1 Naomi Osaka (27 years old). The Japanese with four Grand Slam titles, pregnant last year, returned to the circuit and reached the 3rd round of the WTA 1000 tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami and Rome. She finished the year ranked 60th in the world, a jump of more than 700 positions. The WTA circuit is also full of players on the upward slope. Jasmine Paolini (28 years old, world number 4), finalist at Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, is among them. For the Italian, 2025 will be the year of the confirmation sought at the highest level. The American Emma Navarro (23 years old, 8th in the world), semi-finalist of the US Open, and the Russians Diana Schneider (20 years old, 13th in the world), who won his first four titles in 2024, and Mirra Andreeva (17 years old, 16th in the world), semi-finalist at Roland-Garros, also want to continue their momentum.
