No Roger Federer or Serena Williams: Australian Open starts minus 2 big stars

Wearing a dark blue Tshirt bearing Roger Federers first name and pushing a gray stroller carrying her 1yearold daughter Martina as in Hingis along a Rod Laver Arena concourse at the Australian Open Angelica Ibarra spoke for many a tennis fan when she described her mood on Day 1 of Grand Slam action since two of the sports most significant athletes ended their careersIve grown up seeing Roger play so for me tennis IS Roger and Roger IS tennis said Ibarra who said she is from Colombia and now lives in MelbourneNot to see Roger back at the tennis is a bit emotional I also like womens tennis and the Williams sisters arent here as well But Im really excited to see the upandcoming talent of the new generation This will be my first time watching some new playersThe 2023 edition of the Australian Open which began on a cloudy Monday morning Sunday night EST is not the first Grand Slam tournament to be contested without Roger Federer or Serena Williams of courseThat was the case at the 2022 edition of the Australian Open too to name just one exampleWhat is different now is that this marks the first major tournament since Roger Federer and Serena Williams two largerthanthegame largerthanlife figures both 41 and with a combined 43 Slam singles championships and years worth of weeks at No 1 in the rankings announced they would be retiring or to use her preferred term evolvingThey were amazing for the sport They still are You think these people will never retire in a way And to see them actually stop kind of puts things in perspective said Bianca Andreescu the 21yearold Canadian who beat Williams in the 2019 US Open final and eliminated 25thseeded Marie Bouzkova 62 64 on MondayRoger wasnt playing for a long time prior to his retirement and even that time felt a bit weird Serena was kind of up and down tooSo while in years past one absence or another was met with shrugs of Dont worry shell be at the next one or Hey hes definitely going to come back right there is a concreteness about it all now a finite knowing that they are indeed done No matter how much folks might keep looking for signs that Williams is not really and truly doneLook Serena Williams is irreplaceable I mean shes an icon both on and off the court said Steve Simon the head of the womens tennis tour The way that I look at it is I dont see us as losing Serena we just will celebrate her and all of her accomplishments for many many years to come and reflect back on what shes brought to the gameSimilar sentiments can be and have been expressed about FedererObviously eighttime major champion John McEnroe said about Federer there is a void that will never be filledStill the sport must proceedAlso readNovak Djokovic gets emotional after warm return to Australian OpenAnd so the start of proceedings on the blue hard courts of Melbourne glimpses of the faces and the games that will fill the empty spacePlayers seeking a first Grand Slam title such as a pair of American women ranked in the top 10 Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula who both won in straight sets in matches that began shortly after 11 am local time As did Jannik Sinner a lanky 21yearold Italian man seen as among those with a shot to eventually get to the top Scheduled for later action Federers longtime rival topseeded Rafael Nadal still at it at age 36 and owner of a mensrecord 22 Grand Slam trophiesEven the other players find it a tad jarring to scan the Australian Open brackets and be well aware that there is no use looking for the names of Federer or WilliamsFor sure its strange They were great athletes great players legends of the game But tennis still goes on and there will be new players to look out for new players who are going to win the Grand Slams said Casper Ruud a Norwegian seeded No 2 in Melbourne and the runnerup at the French Open and US Open last season Hopefully we will see more firsttime winners That would be a dream come trueThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever