Resilience land

Lucky loser Moez Echargui is about to play one of the toughest matches of his career as a lucky loser. He’ll do everything to honor his status. Can he hope to at least take a set off Learner Tien?

If you haven’t been following Moez’s story, it’s incredible. The Tunisian started his career after cutting his teeth at the University of Reno in Nevada. He’s been on the pro circuit, mainly ITFs, for almost 10 years without ever playing even a Grand Slam qualifying draw. And only this year, in the second half of the season—despite getting injured last year—he strung together Challenger wins and climbed to No. 135 in the rankings, which means he’ll be in the four Grand Slams next season, and finally have a roughly comfortable financial life. His game mirrors his journey. He’s known for making very few errors and having the endurance of a jackal. The tradeoff is that he lacks power. His big results came this summer on outdoor hard courts. It’s harder to wear down your opponent indoors, even on slow courts. Especially when your opponent is named Learner Tien and he’s got brutally long, gritty matches on his resume, like his five-set win over Daniil at the Australian Open. If I’m being realistic, Moez will struggle to hit through Learner. Meanwhile, Learner has improved a lot in attack. Nevertheless, Moez isn’t clumsy at the net. Like any player whose average level is lower, he’ll have to be crafty and take a page out of Bublik’s book. And above all, he should take as much experience as possible from this match to best prepare for future battles in this jungle of players who dream of only one thing: cracking the top 100.