Sports fans as a whole and the media especially generally have a major problem. This problem, when put into a sentence, is “What have you done for me lately?”

We expect much of our athletes. We expect their best efforts and for those efforts to produce results. More importantly, though, we expect those results to last forever. We look at who did the best yesterday and expect that to continue tomorrow. Conversely, when a player or team does poorly we immediately think that something is wrong that needs a major fix.

On the whole, tennis fans are better about this than fans in many other sports. So, while we will see things now like Stanislas Wawrinka and Marin Cilic being expected to do significantly better in Grand Slams than before they won one, we don't see it as a world-shattering shock when they don't.

Of course, expecting them to win or go deeper in majors just because they won one last year is foolish. Both of them had the talent to win Grand Slams their entire careers. For each of them, it was about putting together that perfect fortnight and getting the bounces along the way that every Grand Slam champion needs. Their matchups with the other top players haven't changed. Wawrinka is still pretty evenly matched with Novak Djokovic and outmatched against Roger Federer. Cilic is still almost unbeatable when at the height of his game but not quite able to keep to that insane level for entire matches, let alone tournaments.

And the next few in line are still always the same they have been. Tomas Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, for example, each have the talent to win Grand Slams but maybe not the belief that they can. The fact that they haven't won any, though, shouldn't tell us that they can't. A few results don't change the level or nature of the player.

This becomes most clear during these opening weeks of the season leading into the Australian Open. Players are getting back into their forms after a long offseason, and these early matches can show a little rust. Then again, sometimes players come out fresh and can play loosely early in the year in a way that they haven't shown before. The point is that “what have you done for me lately” in these few weeks is an exercise in futility.

Of course, tennis' system of different levels of tournaments helps curb this attitude anyway. Fans know that ATP 250s and 500s matter a lot less than Masters, which in turn matter a ton less than Grand Slams. And fans know that players know this. So tennis fans are very good about not overreacting to weird results, especially in small tournaments. (Except for that time Rafael Nadal lost to Horacio Zeballos in the Vina del Mar final, and the tennis world exploded over that one.)

So while you sit back and enjoy the start of a new tennis season this week, keep that in mind. Sure, Lleyton Hewitt and Gilles Simon would have loved to have gone farther in Brisbane. And sure, James Duckworth, Sam Groth, and Borna Coric picked up big wins for themselves. But that doesn't mean that they are harbingers for the entire season. They very well may be, but don't get caught up in thinking that they will be.
 

And, of course, this brings us to the week's biggest shocker. Rafael Nadal dominated the first set against Michael Berrer in Doha but went on to lose the match. Before we get all up in arms about what this means about Rafa's health, level, and so forth, just remember what this match is. It's one match, in a small tournament, that Nadal is only playing to make sure he is in good form for Melbourne. Would more match play help? Of course. Does this mean that Rafa's time as a top player is over? Not by a long shot.

So when we watch early matches in small tournaments at the beginning of the year, just sit back and enjoy the tennis. The matches have meaning for what happens in them, granted. But sometimes, that's all the meaning that they have. We can't overreact to individual matches because when we do, well, we're often just flat-out wrong.