A date with Alcaraz & engaged to Sofie: Hanfmann’s Australian Open heats up

German provides the scoop on his special pre-tournament moment

Ini Hanfmann

Yannick Hanfmann proposes to his now-fiancée in Melbourne. By Andrew Eichenholz

Wednesday afternoon Yannick Hanfmann will walk onto the court inside Rod Laver Arena for a big opportunity in the second round of the Australian Open against World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz. But win or lose against the Spaniard, Hanfmann will leave Australia at the end of his trip as a winner.

It all started when Emil Ruusuvuori withdrew from the season’s first major. Hanfmann, who was supposed to compete in qualifying, received a spot in the main draw and suddenly had an extra week to prepare. Thursday looked like a spotty day weather wise, but it would prove to be a day the German will remember for the rest of his life.

Hanfmann was in Melbourne with his girlfriend, Sofie, his sister, Ini, Ini’s fiance and other friends. When the woke up, they decided to rent a car and drive to an animal park and then Red Bluff Lookout, less than an hour’s drive from where all eyes will be on him at Melbourne Park.

“It's beautiful, actually. We were super lucky,” Hanfmann told ATPTour.com. “We were driving to the animal park. It was raining and we were a little down, then the weather actually got good. It was super windy, so maybe the bad weather got blown away. The animal park was really nice, we saw koalas and quokkas and wallabies and kangaroos, all of that. That was really nice.”

But that was only the preamble to a special moment. Hanfmann and company went to a special spot and picked up ingredients for a picnic, when the No. 102 player in the PIF ATP Rankings came to a realisation. It was the perfect location for something he had been waiting for.

“I kind of knew in that moment I wanted to do it, and told my sister and her fiance to maybe go to the toilet,” said Hanfmann, who then proposed to Sofie. They are now engaged. “It was super nice. She was super happy.”

The 34-year-old’s trip Down Under was just getting started. He claimed just the second Australian Open main-draw victory of his career against Zachary Svajda according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index to earn a showdown against Alcaraz.

“It definitely feels good. I had that feeling that maybe things were going to go my way, but you never know,” Hanfmann said. “I'm sitting here, and it feels good.”

This will not be the Antwerp resident’s first chance against Alcaraz. Their first encounter came in 2019 when the Spaniard was just 16 years old at an ATP Challenger event.

“I played him in Sevilla in a night session, and I lost 7-6, 7-6,” Hanfmann recalled. “I was there with my now fiancee, with Sofie, actually, and we were like, ‘Okay, this guy is kind of good’, and now he's No. 1 in the world.

“At that point, already he was super hungry. I felt like he was very pumped, very focused and very into it. You could see that the determination was there, and the game… He was a bit smaller. His serve was not that good, but he was already making a lot of balls. He was playing already kind of heavy. I don't think I played a bad match and I lost to a 16-year-old, so there was already something. And at first, I was a little bit like, ‘How can I lose?’ But then a few years later, it makes sense.”

Alcaraz will take a 1-0 Lexus ATP Head2Head lead into their meeting, but Hanfmann will bring a different element in that he began working with a new coach, Petar Popovic, in 2025.

“Obviously, he's a hard worker, also a total tennis fanatic. He knows a lot, he watches all of it. [He has] a lot of experience with a lot of different players, characters also,” Hanfmann said. “I can learn a lot from him. We changed my serve, and that was kind of the big change, difference maker in the past few months because the serve is important in our game, and we changed the technique a little bit. So that's been really good. So far, so good.”

This is far from Hanfmann’s first moment on a big stage against a top opponent. But that does not make it any less special.

“I'm 34. I've played a lot of them early on [in tournaments]. I would like to play them later on,” Hanfmann said. “I just keep telling myself, ‘Okay, you’ve just got to beat them at some point’. It's tough to beat these guys. But yeah, of course on one hand, it's a big match… That's a huge deal, right? That's what we play for.”

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