Australian Adam Walton grew up playing tennis alongside his older brother Jack. They would create ‘hectic’ Saturday schedules, starting the day practising tennis before playing cricket and rugby in the afternoons.

Their mother Sherry, who is a registered nurse, would often work night shifts and during the day would take the two boys to their activities. When Jack decided to take tennis more seriously, Adam followed in his footsteps.

A native of Home Hill, Walton received a scholarship to a Brisbane boarding school his final three years of high school before moving across the world to the University of Tennessee. Despite being more than 14,000 kilometres away from home, the 24-year-old has found success in the United States.

“I already lived away from my parents for a couple of years, so I felt ready to go to college and there were a couple Australians at Tennessee so that’s a big reason why I chose Tennessee,” Walton told ATPTour.com. “I knew the two Aussies on the team and I wanted to go somewhere where at least I knew someone. Tennessee is in the SEC [Southeastern Conference], which has very strong competition week in and week out, so it was a good pick for me.”

When Walton first arrived at Tennessee, he thought his tennis career would not go beyond college. A standout five years in which he earned ITA All-American honours and won more than 100 matches in singles and doubles changed his mind. Walton graduated in 2022 with a Bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and then turned pro.

“The college route was definitely the way for me. I had a lot to learn, I was a little immature. I got a little bit better every year,” Walton said. “I was a pretty skinny kid and I was always definitely not good enough to try and play pro tournaments straightaway after high school.

“I was an established college player by the end of it and thought I should try it. I had some pretty decent success in the 15Ks straight off the bat and then kept pursuing, and got my ranking up inside 200 in 14, 15 months.”

Now in his first full season on the ATP Challenger Tour, Walton earned his biggest career title in August, when he won the Atlantic Tire Championships I in Cary, North Carolina. The Aussie defeated three of the Top 4 seeds and saved two championship points against Nicolas Moreno De Alboran to become the seventh different singles winner from the University of Tennessee in ATP Challenger Tour history.

Adam Walton wins the Challenger 75 event in Cary, North Carolina.” />
^{Adam Walton wins his maiden ATP Challenger Tour title in Cary, North Carolina. Credit: Alexis Galloway}
“I was on the back of my sixth tournament in a row. I didn’t actually know prior to the event where I was going to play, but I snuck in the main draw,” Walton said. “I guess all the stars aligned and I had an unbelievable week. It’ll be a week that I never forget.”

Still based out of Knoxville, one of the challenges Walton faces is finding time to speak with his family, including his mother Sherry and father Ashley, who works in the construction industry, because of the 14-hour time zone difference between Tennessee and home.

“It’s either real early in the mornings or late at night that you can talk, but you can’t talk during the day,” Walton said.

Despite adjusting to life as a pro and constantly being on the road, Walton is finding success. This week, he is in action at the Cary Challenger, where he boasts a six-match winning streak dating back to last month’s title run.

Tallon Griekspoor took the Netherlands to the brink of the Davis Cup Final 8 in dramatic circumstances on Thursday in Split, where he downed Frances Tiafoe 6-3, 6-7(7), 7-6(3) to secure an upset win for his nation against the United States.

After Botic van de Zandschulp had eased past Tommy Paul 7-6(2), 6-2 to give the Netherlands an early lead in the Group D tie, Griekspoor avenged his loss to Tiafoe in Cincinnati last month with an inspired display against the World No. 11. The Dutchman let slip a match point at 5-4 in the deciding set but held his nerve impressively to claim a tie-break which ended when Tiafoe was given a point penalty for a code violation on match point.

“I just believed in myself,” said Griekspoor. “I stayed calm, still went after my shots like I did the whole match. That’s what paid off in the end, I think. I played a really good tie-break until 6/2, just kept going after it and kept believing and that’s what got me through in the end.”

It was a second singles win of the week for Griekspoor, who defeated Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori on Tuesday. The Netherlands has now won both its ties in Group D but will still have to wait until its final clash against host Croatia to confirm its spot in the Final 8 for the second consecutive year. Doubles pair Wesley Koolhof and Matwe Middelkoop can boost their country’s position further on Thursday evening by overcoming Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram to complete a sweep against the United States.

Canada Surge Continues In Bologna
Vasek Pospisil and Gabriel Diallo maintained Canada’s perfect start in Group A with a singles victory apiece against Sweden to move the defending champion to the brink of the Final 8.

Pospisil overcame Leo Borg 7-6(5), 5-7, 6-2 to set the North Americans on course in Bologna, before Gabriel Diallo notched his second win of the week with a 6-4, 6-3 triumph against Elias Ymer. It marked a first victory for Canada in three Davis Cup meetings with seven-time winner Sweden.

Diallo’s triumph against Ymer was another impressive result for the World No. 158, who defeated Lorenzo Sonego for his first Davis Cup match win on Wednesday. The 21-year-old backed up that result up by converting three of his six break points against Ymer to secure Canada’s fifth straight rubber of the week. Alexis Galarneau and Pospisil will try to make that six in the doubles later on Thursday, when they take on Filip Bergevi and Andre Goransson.

With the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Jeddah heating up, several #NextGenATP stars earned standout results in July, August and September to make their moves in a bid to boost their chances of qualifying for the Next Gen ATP Finals, to be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from 28 November-2 December.

Stricker & Shelton Deliver At US Open
Ben Shelton and Dominic Stricker stared at the US Open, clinching career-best results at a major to consolidate their positions in the Live Race To Jeddah. The 20-year-old Shelton defeated countryman Tommy Paul and Frances Tiafoe to become the youngest American to reach the last four at the hard-court major since Michael Chang in 1992.

Stricker, currently seventh in the Live Race To Jeddah, advanced to the fourth round at a Grand Slam for the first time. The 21-year-old Swiss had won only one major match (Wimbledon 2023) before arriving in New York, but showed fans how dangerous he can be with his big lefty serve.

Stricker upset World No. 7 Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second round to earn his first Top 10 win, before losing against Taylor Fritz in the fourth round.

“Such a great day for me, such a great win,” Stricker said after beating Tsitsipas. “It gives me a lot of confidence and I think it is great to see from my team. We are working hard every day and it is so great to do that.”

Fils & Van Assche Enjoy Hamburg Success
Frenchmen Arthur Fils and Luca Van Assche are fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Live Race To Jeddah. Fils and Van Assche were consistent on the Tour over the past two months, with both earning their standout result in Hamburg.

Fils, 19, advanced to his fourth tour-level semi-final of the season at the ATP 500 event, upsetting then-World No. 4 Casper Ruud for the biggest win of his career by Pepperstone ATP Ranking. Van Assche, 19, reached his first tour-level quarter-final on the clay in Hamburg. He beat Alexandre Muller and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

Michelsen Stars On Home Soil, Medjedovic Makes Breakthrough
Alex Michelsen enjoyed success on home soil on the ATP Tour to climb to eighth in the Live Race To Jeddah. The 19-year-old American, who is aiming to make his debut at the Next Gen ATP Finals, reached the title match in Newport in just his second tour-level event, before he advanced to the third round in Winston-Salem.

Serbian Medjedovic also broke new ground, reaching his first tour-level semi-final in Gstaad. The 20-year-old, who had not won a match at an ATP Tour tournament before Gstaad, then captured his third ATP Challenger Tour trophy of the season in Mallorca in September.

Medjedovic has been coached by countryman and former World No. 12 Viktor Troicki since the start of the year. The 20-year-old is pleased with how their partnership has developed.

“I’ve been working on many things with my coach Viktor. He’s been through the situations that I am [going] through now and he’s helping me a lot, especially with my mental game,” Medjedovic said.

Chasing Pack
A number of #NextGenATP stars enjoyed impressive results to improve their qualification bids.

Twelfth-placed Pablo Llamas Ruiz and 13th-placed Luca Nardi both won ATP Challenger Tour events in July and August, respectively. Shang Juncheng, 16th, won a tour-level match in Atlanta before advancing to the third round in Washington, where he defeated Shelton.

Czech Jakub Mensik, 14th, reached the third round at a major for the first time at the US Open. ATPTour.com spoke to Mensik’s coach, Tomas Josefus, at the hard-court major.

“Jakub is an aggressive baseliner for sure. His game style is really aggressive and is trying to put pressure on his opponent with taking time away. That’s probably the signature of Jakub’s game,” Josefus said when describing Mensik’s game. “He has a big serve and big return. In today’s tennis, and in today’s game, zero to four-shot rallies, especially here on hard courts in the U.S. are a minimum 60, maybe sometimes 70 per cent of all points. So definitely a big serve and big return is a big strength of Jakub’s game.”

Zachary Svajda was two years old when he first started playing tennis. He would volley a balloon back and forth in the living room with his father Tom to make an early start on developing hand-eye coordination skills. The California native soon transitioned to a court, where he enjoyed riding the ball mower to pick up the court full of balls he had just hit.

As Svajda grew older, his family decided to set him on a unique junior path. From ages 10 to nearly 15, he did not play any tournaments. Instead, the goal was to finetune his game as much as possible.

“We were just thinking about it as I got to be nine, 10 years old, we just didn’t really see a point of playing these junior tournaments every week,” Svajda told ATPTour.com. “We just tried to focus on getting better. I know it’s different because tournament play is always different from practice.

“We also couldn’t afford to travel around the world playing ITFs or anything. We were like, ‘Let’s just take a different route and let’s just try to get better every day and hopefully by 15, 16 I’d be a good player and get those matches from there.’”

The 20-year-old Svajda has always been surrounded by a strong support crew, including his mother Anita and father Tom, who works as a teaching pro at Pacific Beach Tennis Club in San Diego.

Many coaches might stress the importance of point play and competing in pressure moments at a young age to gain experience. The Svajda family had a solution for that too. Former University of San Diego star Uros Petronijevic lived with the Svajdas for two years. Petronijevic, an ITA All-American who graduated college in 2016, and Svajda would often play practice matches.

“Obviously it’s a little different than practice, but I would say that’s how I got my point play every day. We were doing a lot of practice matches,” Svajda said.

Taking his own path has paid off for Svajda, who twice won the USTA Boys’ 18s National Championships in Kalamazoo (2019, 2021). The American has since been climbing the Pepperstone ATP Rankings and is in position to crack the Top 200 for the first time Monday.

Svajda’s younger brother Trevor, three years his junior, took the same approach by not playing junior tournaments for several years and has since found early success. In August, the 17-year-old was a finalist in Kalamazoo and competed in US Open qualifying, which Zach advanced through to make the main draw in New York.

“I [tell him], ‘Don’t think about me, you have your own route. Whatever that is, don’t stress about anything,’” Svajda said. “In Kalamazoo, he was kind of nervous and he was like, ‘I feel like I should win it because you did twice.’ I told him, ‘Dude, it doesn’t matter if you lose the first or second round, I still love you the same, doesn’t matter. Try to go out there with no pressure at all.’ Sure enough he made the final, which was great.”

Watch the clean-hitting Svajda play and you will find the 5’9” star does not show emotion on court. If you did not know the score of the match, it would be hard to tell by watching Svajda’s body language.

“Every match, if I’m winning or losing or if it’s a really good day or bad day, I’ll always just have that same demeanour where I don’t get frustrated at all really,” Svajda said. “I think just as a kid I was always quiet on and off the court, almost in a shy way. I guess it kind of translated over to the tennis side.

“I don’t yell, ‘Come on!’ or don’t do much of that. I’m trying to work on showing a little bit more positive energy but it will take some time because I’m not fully used to it. I just like to stay calm and present, move on to the next point… I’m from San Diego so I’m kind of chill, laid back. Nothing really stresses me out. I always just try to stay calm. I can’t remember the last time I raised my voice.”

Seeded eighth at this week’s ATP Challenger Tour event in Cary, North Carolina, Svajda earned his maiden title at that level last October in his home state of California, where he beat Ben Shelton in the final. Svajda has continued to grow since that triumph.

“I definitely have had ups and downs after the win in Tiburon last year but I think now I’m stronger. I’ve also played many more matches this year,” Svajda said. “I qualified for a few ATP Tour events now, so I see improvements for sure. I would say I’m stronger and more match tough.”

Svajda will next be in action Thursday when he faces Great Britain’s Toby Samuel in the Atlantic Tire Championships quarter-finals.

Down match point in the opening round of this week’s ATP Challenger Tour event in Cary, North Carolina, 19-year-old Alex Michelsen survived a lung-busting rally at 6/7 in the second-set tie-break before letting out a loud roar.

Michelsen was on the ropes of defeat to Frenchman Maxime Janvier, but the American held his nerve to survive 5-7, 7-6(7), 6-3 after two hours, 18 minutes. Though it was a tight, heavy-hitting battle, the teenager appeared calm, cool and collected. On the inside, Michelsen’s fiery competitive spirit came alive alongside a methodical approach to turn the match around.

“I just told myself, ‘Keep calm and try to make as many balls as you can and hopefully he’ll give you some mistakes,’” Michelsen told ATPTour.com. “And then he gave me a couple and that was all I needed to get back in the match. I played a very good point to save match point and then I just found a way, so it was good.”

The California native raced through the third set and post match went to cool down in the gym, where he was riding a stationary bike while playing Clash Royale on his phone. Currently eighth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Jeddah, Michelsen’s determination to be the best goes beyond tennis.

“I’m competitive in everything, like when I play video games. I was just born that way. Sometimes it can probably be annoying for some of us,” Michelsen said.

“I’m so competitive in ping pong. When I was at the US Open, I played probably 45 games of ping pong with Learner Tien. He got me, he beat me by like two or three games in the series. We played so much ping pong.”

A native of Laguna Hills, California, Michelsen is one of the fastest rising stars in the sport. This time last year, he was No. 1,015 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings. Michelsen has risen to a career-high World No. 117 on the back of a breakout season in which he made the final at the ATP 250 event in Newport.

In August, the #NextGenATP star announced he would forgo his college eligibility at the University of Georgia and instead turn pro. A memorable moment soon followed when he earned his maiden major main-draw victory at the US Open.

Despite the quick success at a young age, Michelsen is not getting caught up in his potential.

“It is pretty easy for me to focus on the day-to-day. My coaches always tell me, ‘If you put in the work, then you’ll end up higher than others,’” Michelsen said. “Yes there is potential, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t put in the work every day. I just try to keep my head down and keep that up for as many years as I can.”

Perhaps even a better sign for Michelsen’s coaches, Eric Diaz and Jay Leavitt, at the Tier 1 Performance Academy in Laguna Niguel, California, is the fact that the American works hard and enjoys doing so.

“Nothing’s better than the grind. ‘You gotta love the grind’, I tell myself all the time,” Michelsen said. “Because if you don’t love it, then being on the tennis tour really sucks if you don’t love the grind, but thankfully I do.”

Alex Michelsen in action Tuesday at the Atlantic Tire Championships.” />
^{Alex Michelsen in action Tuesday at the Atlantic Tire Championships. Credit: Alexis Galloway}

Michelsen’s strong work ethic comes especially in handy when he is deep into a five-hour training session.

“When you’re on hour four, four-and-a-half hours on court, it’s like you have to push the extra 30 minutes, you have to push it,” Michelsen said. “Sometimes you have motivation, sometimes you don’t. But it’s not about motivation, it’s about discipline. And you have to have that every day.”

The second seed, who in July won his maiden ATP Challenger Tour title in Chicago, will next meet American qualifier Strong Kirchheimer in the second round of the Atlantic Tire Championships on Wednesday.

Jiri Lehecka guided Czech Republic to victory in its opening Group C tie against Spain on Wednesday in the Davis Cup Finals Group Stage.

The 2022 Next Gen ATP Finals runner-up earned a 7-6(5), 7-5 win against Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in Valencia to give his nation an unassailable 2-0 lead. Lehecka struck the ball fearlessly throughout the one-hour, 55-minute clash, firing 25 winners to improve to 2-0 in his Lexus ATP Head2Head series against Davidovich Fokina.

Earlier, Tomas Machac had moved Czech Republic ahead when he beat Bernabe Zapata Miralles 6-4, 6-4 in one hour and 35 minutes. The World No. 119 has now won five of the six Davis Cup singles matches he has played.

Czech Republic, a three-time champion, are aiming to reach the Final 8 for the first time since 2016.

United States & Croatia Level
In Group D action, The United States and Croatia are level at 1-1, with a decisive doubles rubber set to decide the tie.

American Mackenzie McDonald had given his nation an early lead when he defeated Dino Prizmic 6-4, 6-2 in one hour and 37 minutes.

Croatian Borna Gojo then levelled the tie, earning the biggest win of his career by Pepperstone ATP Ranking when he overcame World No. 11 Frances Tiafoe 6-4, 7-6(6). Gojo has been in red-hot form recently, advancing to the fourth round at a major for the first time at the US Open.

Croatia is aiming to reach the quarter-finals in the Davis Cup for the third consecutive year. The United States is chasing its first Davis Cup Finals title since 2007, when it won its 32nd.

The countries will compete across four groups in four cities — Group A in Bologna, Group B in Manchester, Group C in Valencia and Group D in Split — with the top two countries per group to qualify for the knockout stage in two months.

Daniel Evans clinched a vital three-set victory for Great Britain on Wednesday in the Davis Cup Finals Group Stage in Manchester.

The World No. 27 edged past Australian Alex de Minaur 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 to give his country a 2-0 lead in its Group B tie. Evans, who is competing in his 23rd Davis Cup tie for Great Britain, the joint fifth highest in his countries history, broke De Minaur’s serve five times to advance after two hours and 10 minutes.

Earlier, Jack Draper earned victory for Great Britain on his Davis Cup debut, downing Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-7(6), 6-3, 7-6(4).

The 21-year-old lefty rallied from a break down in the third set, clawing back to 5-5 before he sealed his two-hour, 54-minute win with a backhand winner in the tie-break. Draper reached the fourth round at the US Open earlier this month.

Great Britain and Australia are joined in Group B by France and Switzerland. France defeated Switzerland 3-0 in its opening tie on Tuesday.

Canada Upsets Italy
Defending champion Canada also triumphed, defeating Italy in Group A in Bologna.

In the opening match of the tie, World No. 200 Alexis Galarneau upset Lorenzo Sonego 7-6(10), 6-4. The 24-year-old saved two set points in the first set en route to his win.

Gabriel Diallo then sealed the win, beating Lorenzo Musetti 7-5, 6-4 in his second Davis Cup singles match. The 21-year-old hit 10 aces and did not face a break point to earn victory against the World No. 18 after 84 minutes.

This week 16 countries are competing in the Davis Cup Finals Group Stage from Tuesday through Sunday in the hopes of reaching the Final 8 in November in Malaga.

The countries will compete across four groups in four cities — Group A in Bologna, Group B in Manchester, Group C in Valencia and Group D in Split — with the top two countries per group to qualify for the knockout stage in two months.