Eleven Tien beats Daniil Medvedev in fantastic Australian Open showdown close to 3 in the morning in Melbourne

MELBOURNE, Australia – Learner Tien, a 19-year-old qualifier from California, pulled off the biggest upset of the 2025 Australian Open to date by beating the 2024 finalist and No. 5 seed, Daniil Medvedev in five sets, 6-3, 7- 6(4), 6-7(8), 1-6, 7-6(10-7).

It was the latest epic late finish to a tournament that has become infamous for them, a match that lasted just five hours and ended just before 8pm. his career.

For Medvedev, the match is the latest setback in a year that began to go sour when he was two up on Jannik Sinner in the 2024 final. Losing to Tien, a massive underdog who only won his first Grand Slam main match two days ago, is the ultimate experience. Prior to this year, Tien had played just seven ATP Tour matches, including December’s Next Gen Finals, an event only for the top eight players under 20 who play first-to-four sets.

He hardly fits the profile of the new generation of potential men’s tennis stars who have captured this year’s Australian Open, such as Joao Fonseca and Jakub Mensik. They are mostly tall and arrive with large servers and frozen-rope foundations. Tien is a hair under six feet, slight with a cherubic face. But he has a steady, unflappable demeanor, deceptive power that he generates with great footwork and enough guts to make big cuts on the ball when he needs to.

All of it was on display Thursday night and then past midnight Friday morning. Ten confused Medvedev all night and drove him to desperation in a contest with two players not particularly inclined to get on the front foot. In a game of chess, Tien broke down Medvedev’s opening and middle games. Early in the third set, Medvedev tried to serve and volley, breaking two first serves and seizing on any tactic that could get him back into the match.

Midway through, he broke Tien’s serve and had the opening to begin one of his signature turnarounds when Tien missed two easy balls and looked as if he might have missed his moment. But Tien broke Medvedev back in a game which Medvedev started from a point down after receiving a penalty from the chair umpire for threatening to hit a ball at an umpire in anger.

Daniil Medvedev was driven to distraction by Learner Ten’s tennis of a thousand cuts. (Paul Crock/AFP via Getty Images)

In a career marked by strange incidents and tournaments, this was Medvedev’s strangest. He first arrived in Australia just before the start of the tournament and chose to stay at home in Europe for the birth of his second child.

His first round opponent, a Thai player named Kasidit Samrej ranked no. 418 in the world, stretched him to five sets. Then came Tien, who had also needed five sets to advance to the second round. In a match of sometimes endless rallies between the Medvedev forehand and the Tien backhand, it was the American who was more willing to change direction down the line and to inject pace into the rally. Medvedev, nicknamed “The Octopus” for his tentacular court coverage and ability to confound opponents in long rallies, found himself at the other end of his own playbook.

Tien was ready for all of Medvedev’s tricks and spins, and he brought a few of his own, plus a willingness to run down every ball he could possibly get his racquet on. He turned the tiebreak with a deep backhand into the back corner, at the end of one of those marathon points that Medvedev always seemed to win until that defeat to Sinner last year from two sets up, with 24 hours spent on court over seven matches in Melbourne.

The ten brought up a match point and Medvedev slammed down an ace. At 8-8, Tien settled into his backhand corner ready for another forehand-to-backhand exchange, leaving his left side of the court wide open as he had done most of the night and early morning. Medvedev put a forehand into the target and took the set on the next point. Medvedev seized the chance as Tien brooded over what might have been and skipped past the American in a fourth set that lasted just over 20 minutes.

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Tien has been part of a wave of upstarts that have stormed the men’s tournament, registering major upsets and showing where tennis can be headed. Tien and his training partner and friend, Alex Michelsen, Mensik and Fonseca. Their victims have included several of the big names of the sandwich generation – the players now in their late 20s, caught between the Big Three and the young 20-year-olds Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. Michelsen beat Stefanos Tsitsipas. Fonseca beat Andrey Rublev. Mensik beat Casper Ruud. Ten came after Medvedev.

Eleven Tien scrapped with Daniil Medvedev until almost 3am in Melbourne. (Paul Crock/AFP via Getty Images)

After trading breaks in the deciding set, the match fell back into its old pattern. Medvedev maneuvered Tien around the court but refused to come in with the American stretched, allowing him to cut awkward balls back into the court. At 4-5 on Medvedev’s serve, only a foreign backhand volley executed with Tien’s back saved him from going down match point for the second time. They played two more points and then, after 261 minutes of tennis, rain.

At 2:29 the roof closed.

The truly ridiculous thing is that Medvedev has done all this before, playing into the wee hours of the morning last year en route to setting the record for most court time in one tournament in Grand Slam history.

After softballing his way through the fifth set, he came out of the brief rain break where he set the tone with a forehand down the line for the first point, then pushed Tien around the court to grab two more and the crucial service break. He had his first real lead of the night, by about 200 seconds. Ten was not finished. He settled into a decisive tiebreak.

When Tien missed two forehands long to go down 6-7 with Medvedev with two points on serve, Medvedev looked like he had the last wave. Instead, Tien drew another. Medvedev left a volley too safe when in control of the point and Tien sent him down the line to level. Another forehand down the line took him to 8-7 and Medvedev finally had nothing left. A backhand wide and a forehand long, and after four hours and 48 minutes Tien jogged to the net after the handshake. Medvedev was done and another upstart was on the way.

(Top photo: Getty Images)