Dane Sweeny

Sweeny was born in Penrith, New South Wales, in February 2001 and raised on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, where his father Clay, still his coach, started him at the Mooloolaba club. He played the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals at 14 and peaked at junior No. 21 in 2019, then took the long road: an ITF debut in 2018, an ATP debut in Melbourne in 2021, Challenger years after.

At 1.70 m he is among the smallest men in the draw, and the game is built accordingly: a right-hander with a two-handed backhand who gets almost nothing free off the serve, as evidenced by a 2.0 percent career ace rate against 35.5 percent of return points won. He makes opponents hit one more ball; the Hewitt comparisons follow the retrieving, not the weaponry.

The résumé stayed a Challenger résumé a long time (a losing record at that tier, runner-up finishes at Burnie in 2024 and Playford in 2025, a first title at Brisbane in 2026), though 2025 brought seven ITF titles from a 66-15 season. Tour level came in bursts: a Masters main-draw win over Taro Daniel as a 273rd-ranked qualifier in Shanghai in 2023, then a first Slam main-draw win at the 2026 Australian Open, where he qualified, beat Gael Monfils in four and lost to Ben Shelton.

As of September 2026 Sweeny stands at ATP No. 123, a career high of 121 from late July, 153 places up on a year earlier. His US Open debut, on a wildcard, carried the rest: Corentin Moutet retired trailing in the third, and 13th seed Lorenzo Musetti won the opener and five of the next 23 games, putting the 25-year-old into a first major third round. Luciano Darderi ended it in straight sets. No tour-level title yet; the climb is the argument.