Jan-Lennard Struff

Jan-Lennard Struff is German tennis's late payoff. Born in Warstein, a Sauerland town of fewer than 30,000, on April 25, 1990, he came up under tennis-coach parents and turned professional in 2009. The 6-foot-4 right-hander then spent the bulk of his twenties on the Futures and Challenger circuits — the kind of apprenticeship that makes his thirties, not his twenties, the headline of his career.

The game is unapologetically big-man tennis. A heavy first serve sets the table, the forehand is the finishing tool he hunts at every opportunity, and the headband-and-power package has made "Struffi" a home-crowd favorite at the German stops. The vulnerabilities are the flip side of the aggression: when the serve dips or the forehand misfires, the margins thin out fast, and consistency across a full season has never been his calling card.

The signature run came at the Madrid Open, where Struff reached a Masters 1000 final as a lucky loser — one of the more improbable deep runs of the modern era and the result that pushed his career-high ranking into the top 25. He's been a fixture on home soil at events like the Hamburg Open and the grass of the Halle Open, and his ceiling on quick surfaces makes him a live underdog against the tour's elite — the kind of first-strike threat that can trouble seeds like Alexander Zverev or Daniil Medvedev on the right day.

Now ranked 77, Struff is in the veteran phase of his career, working to hold his place against a younger wave that includes countrymen and rising names alike. The serve-forehand blueprint still travels, and on grass through the European summer — Halle, the Boss Open in his home country — he remains a dangerous draw for anyone who'd rather not face a free-swinging German with nothing to lose.