2012 Australian Open: What the Year's First Slam Is Telling About the Future

The Australian Open is about halfway finished, and plenty has happened to keep tennis fans talking.

Obviously, the domination exhibited by the top four seeds is enough to entertain audiences around the world, but that doesn't mean we should forget about what the prospects have shown us this past week.

The Big Four will most likely continue its reign at the top for a few more years, but with young players on the rise, who knows how the Top 10 will be shaken up?

A whole new class of stars is preparing to take the ATP rankings by storm in the coming years, and recent play in Melbourne is showing who will likely emerge at the top.

For starters, take a look at Australia's own Bernard Tomic.

The 19-year-old phenom certainly didn't fail to impress his home crowd, with wins over seeded players Fernando Verdasco and Alexandr Dolgopolov. With these matches, he proved his ability to achieve stardom—not only with his impressive play, but also with his will to fight through long five-setters and come out on top.

Although a disappointing straight-set loss to Roger Federer in the fourth round sent him packing, he did enough to make a statement to the tennis world—he is just about ready to win some titles.

It wasn't his best result in recent tournaments, but Canadian Milos Raonic also continued to impress in Australia.

Raonic only dropped one set in his first two matches, and he took one before losing to crowd favorite and former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt.

Let's face it—after his fantastic run in Chennai, we couldn't have expected more from him right away, but he still did enough to prove himself as a future contender.

Being drawn against Andy Murray in the first round was obviously a major problem for American Ryan Harrison coming into Melbourne, and as expected, he couldn't pull off what would have been a miraculous upset.

However, he did manage to win the first set—one of only two sets taken from a Big Four player so far in the tournament. The obstacle was insurmountable, but Harrison did nothing to void his status as the top American prospect.

Americans can hope to see some late-round action from him within the next two or three years.

And finally, who can forget about the 22-year-old Japanese hero Kei Nishikori, who has arguably been the most shocking story of the Open so far?

Nishikori did not have the hype that some of the other prospects had coming into his Melbourne campaign, but he has certainly made a name for himself—his thrilling five-set victory over sixth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga put him into the quarterfinals, making him the first Japanese man to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal since Shuzo Matsuoak at Wimbledon (1995).

His country already considers him a hero, and with every victory, that status grows.

Nishikori will meet Andy Murray in the quarterfinals on Day 10.

Will these young guns live up to their expectations, or will they disappear from the tennis world in a few short years? That question will be answered before too long, but until then, we can sit back and enjoy the show they're putting on for us.