Alexei Popyrin

Alexei Popyrin is a Sydney-born product of Russian immigrant parents who came up almost entirely abroad — training from age four before relocating to Dubai and then Alicante, Spain, where Davis Cup teammate Alex de Minaur was a childhood neighbour. A junior standout who reached as high as No. 2 in the world after winning the French Open boys' title, the trilingual right-hander turned pro late in the 2010s carrying his weapons well ahead of his consistency.

At 6'5", Popyrin plays what the ATP literally branded "Big-Man Tennis": a thunderous serve and a bulldozing forehand that flattens rallies before they start. The serve is his floor and his ceiling — when the first ball lands, he beats anyone, and when it doesn't, the error column climbs fast. The volatility is the whole story: his ceiling has always troubled the elite; stringing it together week to week is the standard he's chased.

That standard finally clicked in August 2024. At the Canadian Open in Montreal, ranked No. 62, Popyrin strung together five consecutive Top 20 wins, outslugging No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev 6-2, 6-4 in the final — the first Australian to win a Masters 1000 since Lleyton Hewitt at Indian Wells in 2003. Eighteen days later at the US Open, he stunned defending champion Novak Djokovic in four sets on the back of 50 winners, reaching a first major fourth round before Frances Tiafoe ended the run. The fortnight pushed him to a career-high ATP ranking of No. 23.

That peak has since receded. Popyrin sits at No. 90, back in the grind of defending the form that briefly made him a seeded threat — the talent never in question, the consistency once again the assignment.