2018 Australian Open entries announced

The top seven ranked men’s and women’s players and top three quad players at the ranking cut-off plus one wild card for each event make up the 20 players who will go for the title in Melbourne at the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam to be held between 24 and 27 January.

With four different players having won the Grand Slam singles titles in 2017, the men’s field will see many strong contenders at the Melbourne Park.

Argentina’s world No.1 Gustavo Fernandez seeks to successfully defend the title, but will need to be in top form in order to beat Great Britain’s 2016 champion Gordon Reid and Shingo Kunieda, who won the most recent of his eight Australian Open titles in 2015.

Adam Kellerman will return to his home Grand Slam for the first time since 2016. After taking time out from the sport following the Rio Paralympics, the 27-year-old former world No. 8 won the Australian National Championships in November to earn the men’s wild card for this year’s event.

Germany’s world No. 3 and 2014 Australian Open champion Sabine Ellerbrock will be one of three former champions who will contest the women’s singles, alongside 2013 champion Aniek van Kook of the Netherlands and Japan’s world No. 1 Yui Kamiji, who emerged triumphant last year.

Kamiji’s hopes of becoming the first women’s player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles in the same season was thwarted at Wimbledon last July when she was beaten by Ellerbrock in the semifinals.

Another leading contender will be Dutch player Diede de Groot, who won Wimbledon in 2017 and is still fresh from claiming the Singles Masters title.

The quad event will be no less thrilling as home crowd favourite and Paralympic champion Dylan Alcott is hoping to seal his fourth consecutive title in Melbourne. But USA’s world No. 1 and three-time Australian Open champion David Wagner will be a tough-to-beat opponent.

Full entries are available online on the ITF’s website.