Frydenberg on hunt for a win in Kooyong

It's only January and already Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is focused on what will be the most closely  watched match of the year.

Technically he's on holidays, but there's no rest for a treasurer at at the start of an election year, or for an avowed tennis tragic during his beloved club's most high profile annual event.

The genteel Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club yesterday kicked off its famed Kooyong Classic tournament, and this year the Treasurer had his opportunity to take centre court.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ahead of the Kooyong Classic. Credit: Chris Hopkin

On Tuesday, the former club champ played a show match against former pro Richard Fromberg, after a hard-fought warm up with Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sally Peers.

He arrived in customary fashion - 10 minutes late with a dazzling grin.

Dressed in the requisite collared t-shirt - this time, a not-quite Liberal blue - and tennis shorts, the Kooyong MP bounced past the immaculate box hedges and inside the sandstone clad clubhouse.

He did not pass by the club's championship board, where the name 'J Frydenberg' is handpainted in gilt next to 1996.

A two-year sojourn to Oxford in 1997 meant the 1996 club champ never got his shot at back-to-back titles.

But that was another life.

The real match he's currently playing is never far from mind.

Striding out on the endless expanse of green beneath the nerve centre of the clubhouse, Frydenberg talks tax as he limbers up, reaches for his toes, arches his back.

Frydenberg is out to run Labor Opposition leader Bill Shorten ragged with a relentless assault on Labor's tax plan.

If Shorten's plans to wind back negative gearing gave Labor an early ace with young voters frustrated about housing affordability, Frydenberg wants to reclaim the point with an attack on the scope of the tax policy including hikes in personal income tax and capital gains tax.

He's also got an advantage: the latest doom and gloom in the housing market has strengthened his message.

If only anyone would listen to it.

Josh Frydenberg is a former Kooyong club champion. Credit: Chris Hopkin

"It's about more than negative gearing and capital gains tax," he says, courtside during a break between rallies with Peers.

It's clear his real opponent is on the mind, and it's not Peers, who has her heart set on winning a point by luring the Treasurer to the front of the court.

He's still got speed and he gets to the net every time, even if he's short of breath.

In politics, he reckons he can stay the marathon with a slow, persistent volley at Labor policy.

But the crowds are thin on the ground at the tennis on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Shorten wouldn't play ball - his aides tell The Age he was on leave, and, they insist, he doesn't usually respond to pot shots.

Let's see who gets the love when both sides are playing.