Christopher O'Connell About

Cleaning boats at 24, ATP No. 53 at 29: O'Connell's long way round

O'Connell came up the long way. The Sydneysider turned pro in 2011, played his first ITF match that October, and didn't appear in a tour-level main draw until January 2017 at his hometown event; the stretch that defines him is 2018, when, as Tennis Australia tells it, a knee injury sidelined him and he coached part-time and cleaned boats on Pittwater to fund the comeback.

At 1.83 m he has never had a serve to hide behind, so the game runs on early contact and self-generated pace rather than the borrowed kind, with the one-handed backhand the wing opponents load up on. The career rates match the profile — 78 percent of service games held, 32.6 percent of return points won — while 2026 has brought a bigger swing at the first ball, an 11.2 percent ace rate against 9.3 for his career, with winners-to-errors down to 0.93.

2023 was the season that moved him. He reached the third round at Wimbledon, where Christopher Eubanks needed three tiebreaks to stop him, and on 11 September he hit a career-high ATP No. 53. The title column still reads zero, but the win list runs higher than that: Alexander Zverev at Munich in 2023 when ranked 16th, Grigor Dimitrov in Dubai in February 2025, and a run to the US Open round of 32 in 2024.

As of September 2026 he is ATP No. 106 at 32, 5-8 on the season after opening it at 114 and peaking at 95. Cincinnati in August was the exception: past Majchrzak, then Casper Ruud in a match that ended at 7-5, 1-2 and Joao Fonseca, before Taylor Fritz ended it in the round of 16.

Christopher O'Connell at a glance

Christopher O'Connell is 32 years old; was born in Sydney, Australia; lives in Sydney, Australia; stands 1.83 m; plays right-handed; and is ranked No. 117 in the ATP rankings.