Australian Open 2025: Destanee Aiava books her date with destiny
Destanee Aiava has made it through qualifying after winning a three-set thriller at Melbourne Park … a major win already if you know the backstory.
It’s Easter Sunday in Melbourne. Three years ago. Destanee Aiava is ready to throw in the towel. She climbs on the railing of a bridge near her home at Doveton. The intention is to leave the world behind. Three kindly strangers talk her down. Convince her to hang in there. You never know what can happen when you hang in there.
It’s the final round of Australian Open qualifying on Thursday. Aiva may give up the ghost. She’s ripped through the opening set against Germany’s Eva Lys before getting the jitters and blowing the second set. Her attempt to reach the main draw for the first time in four years is hanging by a thread. Court 3 is packed to the rafters, even for quallies, because tennis people know her story, and thousands of kindly strangers help her get up. She hangs in there and wins 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, falling to her knees, wiping her eyes, thumbs-up to anyone and everyone, using her sweatbands to wipe away her tears.
“Mental health, I’ve struggled with,” the 23-year-old Melburnian said this week. “Everyone’s on a different path and I think mine’s slowly getting back on track. I’m speechless, I’ve worked so hard for this, I don’t know what to say. I just thought, ‘Play free. Don’t think ahead.’ I just wanted to clear my mind and I pulled through well. This means so much to me.”
Aiava has been competing on the smell of an oily rag. An oily rag doesn’t get you nice hotels and a massage. For the last three years she’s been pipped in three-set qualifying thrillers at Melbourne Park. When she was dragged into another three-set thriller by Lys, she could have twitched and been spooked by the memory of all the three-set thrillers that didn’t go her way, but she held her nerve and a tense final service game by hammering first deliveries at 181km/h to the delight of her full-voiced, hooting, hollering, foot-stomping, kindly supporters and strangers.
She’ll earn a minimum of $132,000 for making the main draw. Not bad when you consider Aiava was asking her mum to send her $200 just so she could stay on tour a little while ago. She has the raw power to do some damage in the main draw. She just has to keep her head in the game, back herself, be herself, hang in there. At the time of writing, her opponent was yet to be revealed – but a couple of Australia’s other most prodigious talents were pitchforked into blockbusters by the draw.
The 16-year-old Emerson Jones, with the revered mother in Olympic triathlon silver medallist Loretta Harrop, and the sprightly athleticism, and her mum’s famous tenacity and bristling hang-in-there competitiveness, and the svelte figure-eight forehand, and the silky two-handed backhand, has drawn ex-Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina. Jones this week played a couple of belting matches at the Adelaide International, beating world No.32 Xinyu Wang and giving Russia’s world No.9 a run for her roubles, and Rybakina is in the midst of major drama. Her coach, Stefano Vukov, is under WTA investigation for allegedly inappropriate conduct towards his player. Perhaps Rybakina is vulnerable.
The 18-year-old Maya Joint has drawn-seventh-seeded American Jessica Pegula in another opportunity for a gifted Australian teen to show us what she’s got.
Among the men, Australia’s eighth-seeded Alex de Minaur will face the Netherlands’ dangerous Botic van de Zandschulp, the big-hitter who ambushed Carlos Alcaraz at last year’s US Open. Alexei Popyrin, the 25th seed, drew Frenchman Corentin Moutet ahead of a possible showdown with countryman Rinky Hijikata. The unseeded Nick Kyrgios was slotted against British world No. 86 Jacob Fearnley.
All eyes will be on de Minaur and Miss Jones. “I genuinely can’t wait to get out there and play in front of my home crowd,” de Minaur said at a sponsors function on Thursday. “I’ve become a better version of myself and there’s always a lot more expectations when you get out there for the first time of the year. But more than anything I’m just excited to play in front of you guys. I know they’ve got my back from the very first point to the last and jeez, I’m excited to get started.”
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