Before his prophetic name became the talk of the tennis world, Tennys Sandgren began his 2018 season in India at the Tata Open Maharashtra.

At his first and only singles match, he lost to the eventual champion Gilles Simon 6-4, 6-1 on New Year’s Day. The crowd was sparse and even the media box didn’t have all members present. A first-round match on 1st January featuring a former top-10 player and a guy who spent most of his career on the Challenger circuit is not exactly top-billing.

But it was entertaining: flamboyant shots, solid returns, good serves and some drama. Simon was leading the first set 5-0, but Sandgren went on a nice flourish to win four straight games. But he faced a breadstick in the second and eventually bowed out without making of a splash.

Cut to 21 days later.

Tennys from Tennesse has taken the tennis world by storm after upsetting not one but two top 10 seeds to reach the quarter-finals at Australian Open. He played his first match in a nondescript manner on Court 12, beating Jeremy Chardy 6-4, 7-6 (7/2), 6-2. This was, in fact, his first win at the Grand Slam level.

But in the second round, he trumped ninth seed and 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 to make people take notice. Then the 97th-ranked Sandgren beat Maxmilian Marterer 5-7, 6-3, 7-5, 7-6 (7/5) to reach the uncharted territory of last 16. Against fifth seed Dominic Thiem, his marvellous run reached a new milestone when he became just the second man in the last 20 years to make the quarter-finals on his Australian Open debut with a 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (7), 6-3 win.

At a Major where the top American players have fallen early, Sandgren has become the unlikely flag-bearer.

Had the 26-year-old played in Pune after his exploits at Melbourne, it’s fair to say he would have attracted a lot more interest.

Journeyman route

Sandgren is not someone who would grab the attention of the tennis audience at once. He is neither a teenage rising star nor an outright wild child. He is not someone who has enthralled with his tennis, even sporadically, before this. He is a product of college tennis and has no big junior credits either. While he has won 11 Futures titles and three ATP Challenger trophies, for a country that has so many elite tennis players, Sandgren wasn’t big fish. And for all his fancy facial hair style and Twitter jokes, he hadn’t established much of a connect with the tennis fan base on social media.

In other words, Sandgren is one of the many journeymen in tennis who hover on the edge of ATP World Tour and Challenger circuits.

It’s a brutal place to be – ask anyone who has lived the Futures to Challenger to ATP grind. You travel the world mostly alone, spend a lot of money for intermittent returns, see only the court and the hotel room, do your own laundry sometimes and play qualifiers wherever you can, all in the hope of the one breakthrough. It can be in the form of a lucky loser slot or a wildcard or even a first-round appearance at a Masters. A Grand Slam is of course a bonus one can only dream of.

Sandgren himself has missed out on qualifying for Australian Open in the last four years. He made it to the main draw of the French Open last year after a wildcard based on his performance on the Challenger level. He then played Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Zverev in Washington and Marin Cilic at the US Open, not beating any of them.

But somehow Sandgren got his big break this week. A player ranked 97 and having never won a major match before made it to the quarter-finals in on debut. Such a storyline in today’s tennis is unbelievable, so much so that his “realistic” mother, didn’t even come to Melbourne because “it’s only for a couple of days”.

But it’s not sheer luck that has got him thus far. Admittedly, this wasn’t Wawrinka at his best, returning from a six-month layoff after knee surgeries, and even Thiem was not fully healthy heading into the Slam. But Sandgren has exhibited a quality that can get you far in modern tennis – fearlessness. Facing a former champion? Keep attacking. Going five sets against someone way more experienced? Take every single chance.

Play

It was a combination of aggressive tennis and momentum built from the early upset, but he held his own against Thiem. Confidence in an individual sport is a remarkable thing, and Sandgren used like he would use a mystical weapon in the online games he loves.

Breakthrough 2017

The American had a breakthrough season in 2017. In June last year, he broke into the top 100 in June after a semi-final finish at the ATP Challenger in Czech Republic. His jump of 230 spots in a span of a year was in fact the third-largest to the Top 100. Before this, he had a career-high rank of 85, now he can break into the top 50 – a place that is as good as paradise for journeymen pros because it ensures entry into the top tournaments without qualifiers.

He is also guaranteed $352,000 for reaching the quarterfinals, a big leap from his current career prize money of $488,735, according to ESPN.

But it’s not just the ranking and prize money that has increased, so has the spotlight on his persona, as he worked his way from Court 12 to Rod Laver Arena.

There is a lot of chatter about the player with the funky name – what name he gives baristas (It’s David), his passion for online gaming and even his Twitter profile, which has received a lot of flak for it racist content.

But if you separate the athlete from the person, and what you have is a hearty story from the Happy Slam. The kind that makes you want to soak in the beauty of sport even more.

The next chapter of it will be up against Novak Djokovic-beater Hyeon Chung, another amazing Australian Open story. On Wednesday we will know which one has the better ending.