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I don’t usually make many predictions because tennis is too unpredictable and I am a bit superstitious but this prediction is not that Djokovic will win the French Open this year. Just that he will win it again at some point.

With the Australian Open hype having settled down a bit and Fedfans getting their fairytale ending it is time to get back to reality and look ahead to the future. Currently, things have quieted down a bit in tennis with none of the big four back in action since Melbourne.

Since the first major of the year, Dimitrov has continued his good form with a title in Sofia while Alex Zverev continued to show why he is the most promising young talent on tour right now with his second title in Montpellier.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I was a Federer fan I could never see where his 18th slam title would come from but since I became a Djokovic fan I felt it was almost inevitable that he would win another slam.

The only reason that he wasn’t winning #18 was because of how well Djokovic was playing. I knew Federer was still playing at an incredibly high level and that all the talk of decline from his fans was just sour grapes that he kept losing to Djokovic.

Roberta Vinci of Italy returns the ball to Timea Babos of Hungary during the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy-2017 tennis tournament final match in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

The sixth-seeded Italian was broken five times but still advanced to face either German veteran Andrea Petkovic or Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania in the second round.

Also Tuesday, Kristina Mladenovic of France beat Belgian qualifier Elise Mertens 7-6 (5), 6-4 and will next face Australian Open finalist Venus Williams.

Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan also advanced, leading 6-1, 1-0 when Swedish opponent Johanna Larsson retired from the match. Putintseva will next face Annika Beck of Germany.

Italy's Camila Giorgi hits a return against Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky during their women's singles match on day two of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 17, 2017. (Photo credit should read SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The 74th-ranked Giorgi was also fined 30,000 euros ($32,000) for turning down a request to take part in Italy’s tie against Spain in April.

The ban prevents Giorgi from Fed Cup play, training at federation facilities, and from receiving a wild card for the Italian Open in May.

Giorgi already sat out last year’s Italian Open due to the dispute.

Andy Murray, certainly, and Novak Djokovic, probably, will interject and have their say once they recover from the shock of early round defeats at the Australian Open. Stan Wawrinka will hover in the wings, ready to grab center stage if his mood and his magnificent backhand find the door to that Top4 club left ajar. Juan Martin del Potro, resting his body in January but returning in February at Delray Beach, will surely ascend to the top ten and add some South American flair and power to the battle.

But it is hard to imagine that the senior members of the quartet that has dominated men’s tennis to an astounding degree since 2005 will not be back up there, winning titles and setting up more epic battles like the one we were privileged to witness on Rod Laver Arena.

The final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at Melbourne Park was hyped to the hilt. It was the match everyone was talking about long before it actually materialized as reality and expectations reached ridiculous levels. Except that, when it all came to pass, it exceeded anyone’s imaginings.

The extent to which this epic final helped boost the popularity of the game worldwide will be born out in the coming months as the game’s peripheral fans are ever more captivated by a personal saga that has drawn two of the world’s greatest ever athletes into each other’s orbits for the past twelve years.

The Swiss and the Spaniard, the right hander and the converted left hander, the flightily gifted gazelle and the grounded warrior, the father of four and the betrothed bachelor, one from a landlocked nation and the other from an island – these are different people until they arrive at their place of work and know each other’s business so well that a spark of magic erupts.

The grand slams are the biggest events in tennis that come around only four times in a year which is why I always make one post to look back at what transpired over the past fortnight and look at how it affected the tennis landscape.

The 2018 Australian Open obviously had great significance because of the fact that Federer, at last, bagged that elusive 18th slam title which put him further ahead of the field in the GOAT debate.

When Djokovic was going through the most dominant run in tennis history from the beginning of 2015 to the French Open in 2016 I had in the back of my mind the idea that at some point there must be some kind of response from Federer.

I am particularly referring to Djokovic completing the personal slam at the French Open. That was something Federer could never achieve and on top of that he had lost four very significant slam matches against Djokovic since 2014.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 29: Roger Federer of Switzerland (R) celebrates winning in the Men's Final match against Raphael Nadal of Spain on day 14 of the 2017 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on January 29, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

The Spanish tennis federation says it will replace Nadal with Feliciano Lopez for next weekend’s best-of-five series at Croatia after a recommendation by the team doctor.

Nadal lost to Roger Federer in Sunday’s Australia Open final in five sets.

Doctor Angel Ruiz Cotorro says the decision took into consideration that Nadal played a significant number of matches after a four-month layoff because of a wrist injury.

On the other side of the net stood his redoubtable rival Rafael Nadal, and he, too, recognized the magnitude of the moment. Nadal headed into Melbourne having not won a Grand Slam championship since he secured his ninth French Open crown back in June of 2014. The Spaniard missed the 2014 U.S. Open with a wrist injury, and could not defend his title there. In 2015 and 2016, plagued by more injuries including a left wrist issue, he never advanced beyond the quarterfinals at the majors. Nadal had to withdraw before his third round match at Roland Garros last year when his left wrist flared up. He did not return until the Olympics, when he was still compromised by the wrist. At the U.S. Open, he squandered a 4-3, 30-0 fifth set lead against Lucas Pouille in the round of 16.

Nadal played two more tournaments in the autumn but was plainly below part at Beijing and Shanghai in losses to Grigor Dimitrov and Viktor Troicki. The Spaniard did not compete again in 2016. He needed time to heal. He wanted to prepare himself for a healthier 2017. Nadal looked reasonably good in his warmup ATP World Tour event in Brisbane, but lost a match in the quarterfinals of Brisbane 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 against Raonic that he once would have won. He was seeded ninth in this tournament while Federer was seeded 17th. But both men survived two five set skirmishes en route to the final. Federer ousted Kei Nishikori in the round of 16 and Stan Wawrinka in the penultimate round. Nadal went the distance with the immensely promising No. 24 seed Alexander Zverev and again in a spellbinding encounter with Dimitrov that lasted four hours and 56 minutes in the semifinals.

So Federer and Nadal had both been fully battle tested. They had triumphed at a time when not many experts believed they could do it. Having achieved that, they set up what was from an historical standpoint the biggest match of their careers. Either Federer would win an 18th major and widen his lead over Nadal, or the Spaniard would collect a 15th Grand Slam championship and move within two majors of his old rival. There could not have been more riding on the outcome of this showdown. Federer was fighting against a fierce current of history. He walked on court with a 11-23 head to head record versus the formidable lefty, and that included defeats in nine of their eleven meetings at the majors and six of eight final round Grand Slam tournament appointments. He had lost three times to Nadal in Melbourne, bowing in a classic five set final eight years ago, dropping a pair of semifinals fought out in 2012 and 2014.

Out on the court tonight in front of an exhilarated audience, with millions more watching their every move on television sets and computers all over the world, the two icons put on a remarkable show. Across five sets, with countless shifts in momentum, through a long evening lasting more than three hours and thirty eight minutes, Federer prevailed in a riveting showdown 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3. In a role reversal of sorts, he outcompeted the man who has so often been the stronger man mentally at the end of strenuous and stressful contests. Federer pulled off a feat in this encounter that had never managed before against a player who had haunted him in so many hard fought battles across the years. He rallied from a service break down in the final set to deny the Spaniard a victory that seemed almost certain. It was Federer this time who was tougher mentally in the crunch. It was Federer who seemed to want the win even more than an adversary renowned for his capacity to come through in the crunch. It was Federer who believed in himself when the chips were on the line.

Most tellingly, Federer played this match more on his terms than Nadal did. He largely set the tempo, refusing to let Nadal dictate frequently enough off the forehand, remaining ultra aggressive at all times, and not permitting the Spaniard to ever settle into any kind of comfortable backcourt rhythm. The Swiss was swinging freely off both sides and he kept backing Nadal up with the sting of his shots and a clear-minded strategy that he has seldom exhibited against a fellow who has confounded him almost incessantly on the premier stages.