Highlights: Tien impresses again to make Montreal quarter-finals<\/p>\n
Video credit: SNTV<\/p>\n
Becker<\/a> remains a keen observer of the tennis<\/a> world, and has been impressed by a young American who has been quietly impressing on ATP Tour for a little while now.It might be the likes of Joao Fonseca and Rafael Jodar<\/a> grabbing the headlines, but instead it is 20-year-old Learner Tien who has caught Becker’s eye.<\/p>\n The California-born left-hander already has two career titles under his belt, having won ATP 250 events in Moselle last year and at this May’s Geneva Open. <\/p>\n He also had a breakout slam run at this year’s Australian Open, romping past former world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev in the fourth round, before falling to Alexander Zverev over four sets in the last eight.<\/p>\n And having reached his first ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final at Indian Wells earlier this season, he is into the last eight again in Montreal, with a winnable clash facing him against Spain’s Daniel Merida Aguilar on Tuesday.<\/p>\n After beating Argentina’s Thiago Agustin Tirante in the last 16<\/a>, Becker was moved to note his support for Tien.<\/p>\n The German wrote on X: “For some reason [Learner] Tien is flying under the radar with lots of experts\u2026.certainly NOT with me!<\/p>\n “He is the real deal, expect big things from him in the near future!”<\/p>\n In comparison to the likes of fellow ‘next-genners’ Fonseca and Jakub Mensik, Tien is not the sort of player to bring the house down with fireworks from the back of the court.<\/p>\n Instead, the current world No. 19 is perhaps more of an Andy Murray-type player, varying his angles, speeds and tactics to move opponents around the court and into uncomfortable positions.<\/p>\n As an example, watch the below rally from Sunday’s clash with Tirante, where a short slice brings the Argentinian to the net, only to be given an awkward volley, and then passed beautifully.<\/p>\n Tien has become the youngest American man<\/a> to make the quarter-finals in Montreal since Andy Roddick in 2002, but his run in Canada may not be over yet.And with his home US Open on the horizon – and Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> both injury doubts – Becker’s bet could be one of the outside candidates at Flushing Meadows.Add TNT Sports as a preferred source here<\/a>\u00a0to enjoy more content like this.Download the TNT Sports app on iPhone<\/a>\u00a0and Android.<\/a>Stream the Premier League, Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Conference League and more on TNT Sports and HBO Max<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Highlights: Tien impresses again to make Montreal quarter-finals Video credit: SNTV Becker remains a keen observer of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[242738,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-atp-montreal-2026","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}