Learner Tien Is The Brightest Pupil

You will notice the announcer of the following highlight reel continually returns to one word to describe Learner Tien's performance against Alexander Shevchenko in the second round of the Australian Open: control. The 20-year-old American tidily dispatched Shevchenko in two quick hours, half of which the Kazakh spent in apparent physical agony and the entirety of which Tien spent in command. The further rallies progressed, the more pronounced Tien's advantage became, on and on through the four brief sets until the 25th seed rolled.

Tien is one of my favorite players to watch in men's tennis. That's because, among the really great and really young players in the game, Tien has a unique blend of strengths and weaknesses. Really, it's weakness, singular: Tien's serve, the most important shot in tennis, is a liability. In a tour otherwise populated with monstrously powerful servers, Tien's first serve hovers around 110-115 mph—roughly a dozen mph slower than the tour's biggest guns—on a good day.