{"id":415713,"date":"2026-01-16T00:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415713\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T00:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:11:10","slug":"dane-sweeny-books-spot-in-main-draw-vs-stefano-travaglia-video-highlights-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415713\/","title":{"rendered":"Dane Sweeny books spot in main draw vs Stefano Travaglia, video, highlights, interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s Dane Sweeny has booked his spot in the Australian Open main draw<\/a> following a tense qualifying victory over former world No. 60 Stefano Travaglia on Thursday.<\/p>\n

In front of a packed crowd at ANZ Arena, the 24-year-old triumphed in his third qualifying match 7-6 (7-5) 7-6 (7-3), reaching the first round of a grand slam tournament for just the second time in his career.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The scrappy Sydneysider, currently ranked No. 182 in the world, was at one stage trailing 4-1 in the second set courtesy of a handful of unforced errors, literally throwing himself around the court to keep himself in the contest. He collapsed to the ground in relief after a nailbiting tiebreak against the Italian veteran, securing a minimum of $150,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n

His current career prizemoney sits at $508,000 (USD).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in disbelief. I was ranked 700 not so long ago,\u201d Sweeny said during the on-court interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI persevered, I was doubting the whole time and I just feel so incredibly grateful to be able to be in this position.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of myself for just digging in there when it was tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a few opportunities to really break the (first) set wide open and I was a bit passive in the big moments.<\/p>\n

NCA. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. January 14, 2026\u00c3\u0089. TENNIS. Australian Open qualifying. Dane Sweeney vs Jerome Kym on ANZ Arena \u00c3\u0089.. Australian Dane Sweeney wins the 1st set . Picture: Michael KleinSource: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the second set that was my goal, just to play with conviction in the big moments, win or lose, and I think I did that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I can\u2019t really believe it yet, but I\u2019m super excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also vowed to celebrate the win by taking his family \u201csomewhere a little bit ritzy with the first-round prize money\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sweeny, ranked as low as world No. 680 last year, resorted to starting a GoFundMe page in 2020 to keep his tennis dream alive.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, he was an unlikely qualifier for the 2024 Australian Open after his last opponent retired. In the first round, he lost to Argentina\u2019s Francisco Cer\u00fandolo in a gruelling five-set marathon.<\/p>\n

Sweeny will face French veteran Gael Monfils, who has announced he will retire later this year, in the opening round of the Australian Open, which commences next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Dane Sweeny has booked his spot in the Australian Open main draw following a tense qualifying victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,85,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-415713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}