Predicting winners in major sporting tournaments is as interesting business. 

Astrology is not fate. 

But transits will certainly tell you if someone is going to perform better or worse than everyone expects.

Just because a tennis player has a big favourable transit that doesn’t mean the Universe has already given them the trophy. But if you can find a narrative for them that fits with the astrological symbols of the time, it’s certainly worth a punt.

When predicting for a tournament, I approach it in a typical Capricorn systematic way. First check the transits of the favourite, then 2nd favourite and so on.

For this Australian Open, there was no need to look past the first one.

I don’t have a birth time for most players but with Novak Djokovic this was a key factor.

The Aussie Open final started with Jupiter at 5.34 Aries, exactly conjunct Djokovic’ Moon.

The exact same transit happened to Roger Federer in Melbourne in 2018 and yes, I predicted him to win then as well.

Any other triple Capricorns reading this would probably say – how hard can it be to predict wins for such clear favourites as these two.

In response to my own sceptical self I would say ok how about Tiger Woods winning the 2019 Augusta Masters, 11 years and several surgeries after his last major win with the same transit ( which I also predicted and made a killing on a 34 / 1 bet ).

Djokovic at 2.5 / 1 is hardly Nostradamus territory but it does help if you can see a symbolic narrative.

This time last year he was rightly refused entry into the tournament and deported due to his anti vax stance which flouted the eminently sensible Victorian Covid laws at the time.

He had Saturn square to his MC at the time.

This year that Moon in Aries is in full revenge porn mode. So with Jupiter on his team he smashed all and sundry on the way to one of the most emphatic tournament wins in history.

The Women’s tournament had a similar favourite. World number 1 Iga Swiatek was similarly priced 2.4 / 1 to win in Melbourne. She had Mars conjunct her Sun, which could have been a factor but it was stationary at the start of the tournament and she had injury problems so there was nothing to be gained by backing her.

A quick check on the transits for all the players up to 30 / 1 ( even a triple Capricorn is not going to research all of them ) revealed nothing much. No one had Jupiter transits.

Its trickier to predict a win with the outer planets than with Jupiter because they stick around for longer and a transit might not refer to the particular tournament you are looking at.

But one thing I have found is that someone claiming their first major, particularly after they have been around for a while would constitute a life changing achievement which is more the province of Uranus and Pluto rather than Jupiter ( just another decent win ).

This would apply to the other half of my 2018 Australian double Caroline Wozniacki – Everything Comes To Those Who Wait who finally claimed her first title with transit Pluto opposite her Sun.

I was also confident of backing Wozniacki because I’d had even greater success the previous year with Sergio Garcia’s only ever golf major victory at Augusta at the age of 37 with Pluto conjunct his Sun.

No-one had Pluto this year either. But there was one with Uranus.

Aryna Sabalenka had transit Uranus conjunct her Sun and Mars. So that’s where we put the cash, on a Djoko and Saba double.

Reading up about Aryna, I could see that the narrative was very strong as well.

Sabalenka had always been fingered as a major winner but never quite managed it. But the last year or two had been an absolute disaster for her. Her serve had gone to pieces to the point where she even hit some underams in last years Aussie Open. Her confidence was shot and it looked like her career was in terminal decline.

This was because Saturn was square to her Sun and Mars at the time.

This Saturn / Uranus pattern would be a familiar experience for anyone with important placements in the middle of the Fixed signs ( Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius ).

For the last two years these two heavyweights have been square to each other, a very challenging planetary combination for us all.

Saturn because it moves faster has been running slightly ahead of Uranus and only recently has moved out of orb for the aspect.

So what has happened is Saturn has done its usual thing, frustrating us and stopping us from getting what we want.

As I have often written about Saturn, its there for a reason, it doesn’t just do all this out of malicious spite.

That reason is to force us to step back and retreat for a while, lick our wounds but also reexamine our whole modus operandi, set new goals for the long term and to put aside doing what we just feel like doing and work in a consistent, disciplined manner towards achieving them.

Some people are better at responding to Saturn’s demands than others. Capricorns are familiar with that type of experience anyway so its just more of the same for them.

Other signs that are more interested in having fun in the moment would not like the Saturn effect and would probably try to keep on partying through a Saturn transit.

Saturn doesn’t care about them. They will just suffer more.

As a Taurus Sun conjunct Mars and Moon in Virgo square Pluto Aryna Sabalenka is not averse to hard work. In fact she would welcome it. So her response to this transit was to go back to the drawing board, strip her serve back to its basics and rebuild it ( all perfect saturnine responses ).

And in the first major after the Saturn / Uranus square had broken up, Sabalenka mark two came out firing aces all over the shop on her way to the title win that was as devastatingly powerful as Djokovic’s was.

She has the Sun / Mars square Uranus nataly anyway and one thing you can be sure of with someone with a birth aspect between the Sun and one of the outers is the next time that relationship is renewed by a transit of the slower partner, the indication from the chart will completely change their life.

So with Saturn out of the way, Uranus conjunct Aryna Sabalenka’s Sun landed her first major.

The Saturn / Uranus square was the astrology of Covid lockdowns. We all wanted to go out to play with our friends ( Uranus ) but we couldn’t ( Saturn ). We were made to stay at home for our own good ( Saturn ). Hopefully some of us used this period to reflect on where our lives were going ( Saturn ) and whether we were getting what we really wanted ( also Saturn ). Then when it finished we could feel the freedom ( Uranus ) as we set off in a new direction ( Uranus ).

My hope, and certainly my advice to all my fixed sign clients has been to try to do their own equivalent of Sabalenka’s Saturn reconstruction in order to benefit from the Uranus new energy openings that would inevitably come once the square aspect between them ended.

So Aryna’s enforced Saturn sabbatical can be a lesson and an inspiration for us all.

What can we learn from Novak Djokovic’s experience ?

With Mars in Cancer in the 6th house opposite Neptune in the 12th, stop being a dickhead about vaccinations or you will be quarantined in a crap hotel.

And

With transit Saturn approaching square to your 4th house Sun, next time leave your fascist father at home.

Posted on January 30th 2023

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