American teen set for dream main-draw debut at BNP Paribas Open

Learner Tien vividly remembers the allure of his childhood visits to the BNP Paribas Open: It wasn't the matches.

“I wasn't super into the tennis, I was here mostly for the frozen lemonades,” Tien told ATPTour.com this week. “Those were the greatest things ever. I was here last year and I couldn't find any.”

No matter. Tien's thirst will be quenched this year as he completes his full-circle journey at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and makes his main-draw debut in the desert after his hard-charging surge up the rankings during the past nine months following a rib injury.

Earning his way at 19 into the tournament on his own merits, not as a wild card, adds additional weight to Tien’s track record of early achievement. He was in high school at 12, won his first USTA Boys' 18s National Championships title at 16 and attended the University of Southern California for a semester at 17.

“When I was young I remember thinking how cool it would be to play here one day. It’s really a dream come true to come out here,” said Learner, who is named in honour of his mother Huyen, a retired teacher, who emigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. with her husband Khuong.

A young Learner Tien and his sister Justice meet Grigor Dimitrov in Indian Wells.
A young Learner Tien (right) and his sister Justice meet Grigor Dimitrov in Indian Wells. Credit: Tien family

Whether it’s reaching the title match of the Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah last December in his first pro event outside the United States, claiming Top 5 wins over Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev this year or breaking into the Top 70 as a teenager, Tien has laid down a series of early markers. None of that has surprised his coach, Eric Diaz.

“I’m not that shocked that he’s doing it. He’s done a good job of managing expectations but at the same time his standards are incredibly high,” Diaz said. “What he’s done he doesn’t view as massive accomplishments, more like his right of way. High standards have always been present for him.”

Tien’s long-term vision put him on an expedited path to success once he hit the pros. Not even a three-month layoff due to a seventh-rib injury early last year, when he had difficulty moving his left arm, could halt his rise. After returning in late May, he won 28 consecutive matches at the ITF and ATP Challenger Tour level. He won three Challenger titles in the second half of the season and concluded his year by reaching the title match in Jeddah, falling to Joao Fonseca.

Then came his stunning run through qualifying to the fourth round of the Australian Open, After surviving Camilo Ugo Carabelli in five sets in the first round, he outlasted Medvedev in a fifth-set tie-break in a match that lasted close to five hours and that ended near 3 a.m.

After the World No. 5 rallied from two sets down to force a decider, the odds were strongly in the US Open champion’s favour. But the plucky Californian lefty flipped the typical script to claw out the signature victory of his young career in a physical and mental triumph.

“I was super impressed with his ball speed off the backhand that night,” Diaz said. “To see him moving up level after level from ITF to Challengers, Next Gen and now tour-level, it’s really great to see that poise, especially when he was standing on the other side of a Grand Slam champion. It was an unreal mental and physical test to maintain that level for such a long period.”

Learner Tien stuns Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 7-6(4), 6-7(8), 1-6, 7-6(7) in Melbourne.
Learner Tien stuns Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 7-6(4), 6-7(8), 1-6, 7-6(7) in Melbourne. Credit: Peter Staples/ATP Tour

With a second Top 5 win late last month over Zverev in Acapulco, Tien comes into Indian Wells with six victories from 10 tour-level matches this season. That has him sitting at a career-high No. 68 in the PIF ATP Rankings, almost 350 places higher than this time last year, when he was in the stands watching good buddy Alex Michelsen fall to Tommy Paul.

A few months after that match, as he continued his recovery from his rib injury, Tien posted a graphic on Instagram of two pickaxe-wielding diggers in a dirt tunnel. One gave up, but the other kept swinging, getting closer to breaking through to the diamonds that he hoped - but didn’t know - were on the other side.

The willingness to work hard, stay patient in difficult times and commit himself to the larger prize has been hallmarks of Tien’s progression.

“It's stemmed a lot from the way my parents approached my junior tennis,” Tien said of his big-picture thinking. “Losing [under 12, under 14] matches feels like the most terrible thing ever, but looking back, I don't even remember half of them. So having that instilled in me from a young age has been great, just to kind of focus on more long-term goals and long-term progression.”

It All Adds Up

Tien’s low-time-preference mindset can also be seen in the way he has built a game plan around courtcraft, constructing points and understanding the geometry of the court. Even now, standing just 180 cm and weighing 73 kgs, Tien isn’t trying to build a reputation as a master blaster or servebot.

“Through his junior career, we had to establish various ways to inflict damage,” said coach Diaz. “It’s not always with pure power. It’s putting the opponent into an awkward court position and then injecting pace when he’s able to. That’s why he sees the court as well as he does.”

Tien concurs. “I think understanding my identity as a player pretty young was important for me. Knowing that I'm not always going to blow guys off the court, that I have to find different, craftier ways to win has really helped me a lot in problem solving my way through matches.”

As a young fan at Indian Wells, Tien largely eschewed the action on Stadium 1 in favour of the grittier experience of watching players at close range on the practice courts. Even that far back, he needed to call on his court smarts to succeed.

“When all the big players were playing, it was kind of tough because it gets pretty crowded over there,” he said. “You're fighting through crowds of people just to try and get a glimpse. I remember I was small. I was on the far side of the first row of practice courts. I'd stand on the fence on top of the concrete, and I'd look over the fence.

“It was cool just to see those guys close up. You can really see how hard they're hitting, how they're moving. Sometimes it's kind of overshadowed when you sit in the stadiums and you're kind of far away, so I think just to see it close up was cool for me.”

Despite lingering around the practice courts (some of the world’s most spectacular with the Santa Rosa mountains as a backdrop), Tien wasn’t a big autograph hunter. But he does recall leaning over the exit tunnel on Stadium 1 to snare a signature from Novak Djokovic. Just one problem: He no longer can recall what happened to that signed ball.

Now it’s his turn to give back. During a stroll of the grounds Tuesday during media day, he happily obliged fans with autographs and selfies on the manicured players’ lawn.

“It's almost weird sometimes when kids come up to me and ask, because I feel like I'm not that much older than them sometimes," Tien said. "But it's cool, and I enjoy it all.”

Tien was introduced to the sport by watching his father play league matches. “Eventually my dad started feeding me some balls… it all kind of stemmed from that," he said. (Learner’s sister, Justice, is named in honour of Khuong, who is a lawyer.)

Then came the visits to the BNP Paribas Open, where the frozen lemonades and, to a lesser degree, the matches, caught his eye, including one clash between Djokovic and John Isner.

He attended the USTA Training Center in Carson around the age of 10 and at 15 he teamed with Diaz and Jay Leavitt at Tier 1 Performance in Newport Beach, where close friend Michelsen also cut his teeth.

He won two USTA Boys’ 18s National Championships, reached the 2023 Boys’ finals at the Australian Open and US Open (where he also lost to Fonseca) and won his first ATP Challenger Tour crown at 18 in Bloomfield Hills last year.

As he contemplates playing his first pro season overseas on the world’s grandest stages and against the game’s best players, Tien fully expects that the year ahead will be one of learning.

“Honestly, I know there's going to be a lot more losing at this point,” he told ATP Media on the eve of his Indian Wells debut. “It's more of a transitional phase for me. So I'm prepared to go through the ups and downs of being in a new environment.

“Going up against the top players in the world is something new to me that I don't have a lot of experience dealing with. Win or lose, I know it's something that will help me a lot going forward.”

Another learning experience awaits.