The year 2013 has yet to officially come to a close, but the 2014 tennis season is set to kick off in just a little over a week.   With it will emerge new storylines and questions, from whether Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams can continue their dominance to how Novak Djokovic performs under the tutelage of Boris Becker.  As intriguing as these questions and others will be, arguably two of the more important plot points center on how Andy Murray and Maria Sharapova will perform out of the gates.

As has been noted, it is difficult to gauge just how successful Murray’s return to competition will be given what has transpired since we last saw him in September.  Despite that, he is still sitting prettier than Sharapova heading into 2014.  Murray has the luxury of knowing that he had a great 2013, which included finally winning the coveted Wimbledon crown, and his immediate upcoming schedule is ideal for making his return to competition. 

Murray starts his 2014 campaign with the high-profile Mubadala World Tennis Championships exhibition tournament in Abu Dhabi.  It features a star-studded field comprised entirely of top-10 men, including Nadal and Djokovic, so Murray will have the opportunity to test himself against the sport’s best right from the start.  He further benefited from drawing Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as his opening-round opponent at the event.  The Frenchman is no slouch, but his own injury woes this past season make him a less intimidating opponent for Murray’s first match back.  Returning at this type of an event also means less pressure for Murray.  The event in Abu Dhabi is one of the more competitive exhibitions, but it is still an exhibition.  With no points or ATP title at stake, none of the competitors is likely to pull out all of the stops.

There will be plenty of time for Murray to pull out all of the stops in his first ATP tournament of the year, a week later in Doha.  It might seem strange that Murray has opted to start his 2014 campaign in Doha rather than Brisbane, where he is the defending champion, but Murray fans know that the Scot has enjoyed plenty of success in Doha as well.  He has played the event three times, reaching the final in 2007 before going on to secure back-to-back titles in 2008 and 2009.  With a track record like that, how Murray fares in the Persian Gulf will suggest how quickly he is finding his range and what we can expect from him at the Australian Open and afterward.

Like Murray, Maria Sharapova is also looking to start 2014 strong.   Unlike Murray, she does not possess the same ideal setup as she prepares to do so.  That is not to say that Sharapova had a poor 2013 campaign by any means.  Coming into Wimbledon, she had reached the semifinals or better at all but one of the tournaments that she entered.  Still, that run did not include a major title, and it did include a few painful losses to Serena Williams.  Furthermore, once she reached Wimbledon, the wheels came off in a big way.

Sharapova was unceremoniously bounced out of the second round of the year’s third major by world No. 131 Michelle Larcher de Brito.  To add insult to injury, she took a particularly bad tumble and tweaked her hip in that loss.  She then tried to get fit for the hard court season, but her efforts were in vain.  She would play only one more match in 2013, an error-strewn second round defeat to Sloane Stephens in Cincinnati, before a right shoulder injury that had plagued her since the clay forced her to end her season. 

Injuries were not the only thing plaguing Sharapova in the latter half of 2013.  She also had to deal with off-court issues.  Prior to Wimbledon, Sharapova engaged in an ugly public spat with Serena Williams.  Although both women quickly appeared to move on, it is a topic that refuses to go away.  More important than the tiff with Serena was the coaching debacle with Jimmy Connors.  The debut of their partnership came in Cincinnati, where Sharapova lost to Stephens, and it literally was one-and-done for the duo.  Given her performance in Cincinnati and early exit from Wimbledon, it was Sharapova who shouldered the bulk of the bad press for the split. To her credit, she has admitted that it would have been difficult for any coach to have come in and successfully taken the reins considering her situation at the time.    

Thankfully for the Russian, she starts 2014 with a new and experienced coach in Sven Groeneveld.  She is apt to be refreshed and in a better place mentally than where she was in August, as she will need to be.  Sharapova has not been one to play warm-up events going into the Australian Open, but she is looking to do so this year at the Brisbane International.  (She had planned to start her 2013 season in Brisbane, but a right collarbone injury forced her to withdraw from the Australian tune-up.)  Sharapova will have to hit the ground running in a strong field that includes Williams and Victoria Azarenka if she is to contend for the title in the first tournament of her return.  It is also imperative that she look sharp out of the gates if she is to quickly regain her confidence and repair her aura.

That is why the start of the year may prove so crucial and telling for these two players.  It is a little bigger for Sharapova, who has more demons to bury, than it is for Murray, but the opening weeks of the 2014 season could have a significant bearing on the remainder of the year for both of these fierce competitors.  They both belong near the top, and the sport will be better for it if they can get there sooner rather than later.