One reason we as tennis fans enjoy the majors so much is the opportunity to see new talent shine. Sometimes it is someone we have heard a lot about from their junior exploits and sometimes it is someone who is a relative unknown, who has been toiling away on the Challenger circuit.
As an avid tennis fan, it’s rare for me not to have heard about a player or at least seen them play once before; however, I will confess that although I had heard about Tennys Sandgren, I had never seen him play until his match against Stan Wawrinka. I chalked up his win over Wawrinka to be an opportunistic victory given that Wawrinka had not played a competitive match in a long time and this was his first tournament since his knee surgery last July. Having thought that, it was still impressive for the American to actually stay focused and capitalize on his opportunity.
While all the attention was on the Americans ranked much higher than him, Sandgren has quietly gone about his business, one opponent at a time. He has won more matches at this tournament than his previous combined victories on the ATP World Tour. As a professional since 2011, his career win-loss record was frankly, bad; yet, he has turned out to be the male American story of the 2018 Australian Open. He is the lone male standing in singles in the second week of a major and no one can take that away from him. He will have his hands full against Dominic Thiem in the fourth round, but if he continues to play as well as he has, I think he can win.
His female counterpart is Madison Keys; she is the sole American women into the second week of the Australian Open. While many would have loved to see Coco Vandeweghe and Venus Williams duplicate their results from last year, their hopes were shattered when both were dispatched in the first round by their lower ranked opponents. Keys will have a battle in the fourth round against a very tough opponent, Caroline Garcia. The winner will be the one who can manage their nerves better as both have been prone to succumbing to jitters in pressure situations.
SPECIAL MENTION: Bernarda Pera’s exciting run came to an end in the third round when she lost easily to [20] Barbora Strycova: 2-6, 2-6.
SOURCE OF IMAGE: Zimbio.com (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images AsiaPac)
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