MELBOURNE, Australia — Across seven hours on Friday afternoon, the Australian Open morphed into an American tennis farm.
It was nearly impossible to watch a singles match without seeing a red, white and blue flag on the scoreboard, as two early-twenties and one teenager who looks even younger than his 19 years rumbled through the men’s draw and into the second week.
Did anyone have two Orange County boys, Learner Tien and Alex Michelsen, tearing into the round of 16?
They didn’t.
“I was down a set and a break in the first round of qualies,” Tien, the teenager in the group, said after he had dusted Corentin Moutet of France in three sets. “To now be in the second week feels a little crazy,” he added.
Michelsen had got there first, putting out No. 19 seed Karen Khachanov in three sets.
Wins for American women sandwiched all this, with Emma Navarro getting through to the second week in her third consecutive three-set win to start the day. Madison Keys got there to end the night, beating friend, compatriot and Australian crowd favorite Danielle Collins.
All that was a little less surprising. Keys and Navarro have been there before, as has Coco Gauff. Tommy Paul’s best Grand Slam result came in Australia when he reached the semifinals in 2022, and he joined Gauff, Keys and Navarro with a routine win over Roberto Carballes Baena the previous day. Paul and Gauff then kept the American mojo rolling even further, winning their fourth-round matches over Alexander Davidovich Fokina and Belinda Bencic.
Tien, 19, and Michelsen, 20, who will try to keep the vibes alive Monday in Melbourne, are on a rise that is the opposite of that. Michelsen has some past form: he made the third round in Melbourne last year and he has won a couple of first-round matches at the U.S. Open in the last two years — but not like this, knocking off two top-20 players in three matches.
Tien, a two-time national junior champion, had played two Grand Slam main draw matches before this week, a four-set loss to Arthur Fils at the 2024 U.S. Open, and a three-set loss to Tiafoe the year before. The third time was the charm. He beat Camilo Ugo Carabelli of Argentina in five sets.
Then the draw handed him two matches against the arch antagonists of the ATP Tour, less a baptism of fire than a mind-bending trip into twisting shots, beguiling spins and the dark arts of tennis with the big boys. Tien took on fifth seed Daniil Medvedev for five sets and nearly five hours in a match that ended not long before dawn. Then came Moutet, who at two sets down reminded Tien that he still had to win a third one, which Moutet played as though hobbled by a hip injury on some points while scrambling across the court at full speed on others. Interesting times for a Grand Slam newbie.
“Didn’t really know what was going on with him,” Tien said in his news conference, still with one foot in the washing machine.
Add in Ben Shelton’s four-set win over Lorenzo Musetti, the Italian who had beaten him two times out of two, and a remarkable statistic appears: this is the first Grand Slam since 1993 with three American men under 23 in the second week. Tien and Michelsen are also the first pair of American men aged 20 or younger to reach the third round at a Grand Slam since the 2003 U.S. Open when Andy Roddick and Robby Ginepri, Michelsen’s coach, did it.
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