If 2025 was Learner Tien’s breakout season, 2026 might be the year he steps into the spotlight.
With a straight-sets win over Nuno Borges in the third round this week at Melbourne Park, the 20-year-old equalled his best result at a Grand Slam, having made a run to the round of 16 in his Australian Open main-draw debut last year.
MORE: All the scores from AO 2026
Tien’s win makes him the second-youngest American to reach back-to-back men’s singles fourth rounds at a single Grand Slam event, after Andy Roddick at the US Open (2001-03).
The world No.29 has now won 13 of his past 16 matches, and claimed the Next Gen ATP Finals crown in late December.
Even so, Tien is not getting ahead of himself. “My focus is on my next match right now,” he said. “I don’t like to look that far ahead. I like to take it match by match and week by week. Right now, my biggest focus is my next round.”
The next match in question looms as an exciting chapter in an emerging rivalry.
Tien faces three-time AO finalist Daniil Medvedev, one year on from outlasting him in five sets. He also beat him in Beijing, but Medvedev won their most recent encounter at the Shanghai Masters.
“All of them have been wars,” Tien said of his three encounters with Medvedev – a player he’s been compared to despite the 18cm height difference.
“We both don't make it easy on our opponents,” he added. “So, naturally, we're not making it easy on each other.”
After a lean year, Medvedev appears to have his mojo back, fighting back from two sets down in his third-round match against Fabian Marozsan to remain undefeated in 2026 – having already claimed a title in Brisbane.
Problem-solving prowess
It’s difficult to pinpoint a single standout in Tien’s game.
The left-handed American isn’t as quick as Alex de Minaur, nor does he generate the raw pace and electricity of Carlos Alcaraz. Yet it’s even harder to find a weakness. Tien’s game is technically impeccable for a player his age, and he is already one of the most mentally composed men on tour.
“I think I compete very well, I think I problem solve very well,” Tien said, when asked about his biggest strengths.
“I don’t play a super generic game. I can kind of mix things up… but something big for me moving forward is when I start playing guys multiple times, and they figure out how I play. Finding a way to win when people know my game.”
Tien played 60 matches in 2025 and won 36 of them, including a maiden ATP title in Metz. He also reached a final in Beijing, losing to Jannik Sinner, and beat Alexander Zverev on a quarterfinal run in Acapulco.
Born in 2005, Tien says his idols were Gael Monfils, as well as the Big Three, and he really hopes to play as many matches as he can against the heavyweights of the sport.
“Maybe not first round, but I’d love to play Carlos [Alcaraz] sometime. I’d love to play Gael before he retires. Playing someone like Novak again, even though I’ve already played him, I’d love another chance at that.”
Tien’s journey has been a hybrid of the college system, where he enrolled early at the University of Southern California at age 17, before deciding to turn pro after a semester.
In 2023 he made the junior boys’ final at the Australian Open as well as the US Open, where he lost to Joao Fonseca.
In July 2025, Tien signed former AO finalist Michael Chang as his head coach, a partnership that is steadily paying dividends.
“He's very encouraging. He's never getting down whether I'm playing well or whether I'm playing poorly,” Tien said. “He’s always just consistently giving me good energy, a lot of support.”
With every strong result at a major comes heightened expectations. Tien has been touted as a future top-10 player and is viewed as a serious Grand Slam threat in the coming years. But for him, it’s all just background noise.
“My biggest focus right now is just improving. There are a lot of things in my game that can still get better. So that's my biggest focus,” he said.
“If I just focus and work on the areas that need work, then the results, the ranking, all of that will come.”