Delray Beach
\n Tien rallies to shock defending champ in Delray Beach: ‘I just kept believing’<\/p>\n
Lefty fresh off run to Australian Open quarter-finals<\/p>\n
February 19, 2026<\/p>\n
Andrew Patron\/BigShots Photo<\/p>\n
Learner Tien defeats Miomir Kecmanovic in a final-set tie-break Thursday in Delray Beach.
\n By ATP Staff<\/p>\n
Learner Tien<\/a> was not ready for his Delray Beach Open<\/a> to come to an end.<\/p>\n The 20-year-old lefty was two points from defeat against defending champion Miomir Kecmanovic<\/a> \u2014 who served for the match at 5-4 in the deciding set \u2014 but rallied for a 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-6(5) victory and a place in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n \u201cI just kept believing,\u201d Tien said in his on-court interview. \u201cI got broken on kind of a bad game at four all, but just tried to put that behind me as best I could, and just made him beat me.\u201d<\/p>\n Kecmanovic showed no signs of nerves when he served for the match, hammering away from the baseline and putting consistent pressure on the home favourite. But Tien played great defence, turning into a brick wall at the most critical moment.<\/p>\n Once the reigning Next Gen ATP Finals champion retrieved the break, he was able to surge to the finish line and take a 2-1 lead in the pair\u2019s Lexus ATP Head2Head series.<\/p>\n \u201cI got a little lucky. I think luck always plays a little bit of a role,\u201d Tien said. \u201cBut I think just fighting, just staying in there every point, and really making him close me out, I think [that] just paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n Tien is fresh off a run to the quarter-finals of the Australian Open<\/a>, where he beat a former No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, Daniil Medvedev<\/a>, and pushed Alexander Zverev<\/a> to a fourth-set tie-break.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Delray Beach Tien rallies to shock defending champ in Delray Beach: ‘I just kept believing’ Lefty fresh off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-491398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491398","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=491398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}