Ethan Quinn And The Progression of a Pro Tennis Player at the Delray Beach Open

By Randy Walker

@TennisPublisher

The 2025 Delray Beach Open marked about 18 months since 20-year-old Ethan Quinn of Fresno, Calif., turned professional after winning the NCAA singles title as a red-shirt freshman for the University of Georgia. The event is another step up the competitive tennis ladder for the 20-year-old from Fresno, Calif., transitioning from college tennis to playing “Futures” pro tour tournaments to Challenger-level events and, ultimately to the ATP Tour level, or “The Show” as it is referred to in major league baseball terms in the Kevin Costner movie “Bull Durham.”

“It’s something new every single week,” said Quinn after a first-round win in Delray Beach, his eighth career main draw appearance on the ATP Tour level. “Now I’m leveling up to the ATP Tour rather than the Challenger Tour. So I’m learning things and the ins and outs of the ATP Tour. I feel like I’ve almost, not mastered the Challenger level, but now I know how to get through it each week. The ATP Tour is a little bit different. You have these amenities that you wouldn’t really have at some of the Challenger tournaments. Obviously you have stadiums like this, which is pretty incredible. You’re just trying to kind of manage everything. The changeovers are a lot longer on the ATP Tour and I had to really figure that out how can I manage the time in between. Sometimes you’re on the bench and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is a lot longer than the Challenger Tour.’ So, I’m kind of learning how to manage that and kind of let down from the last games and then fire yourself up for the next game. You have to really see and feel the changeovers and you can only do that by playing more tournaments.”

Quinn’s dramatic 6-2, 6-7(5), 7-6(2) first-round win in Delray Beach over fellow American Tristan Boyer was only his fourth career win on the ATP Tour main draw level. While Quinn has gained entry into ATP events from wild cards and via the qualifying rounds, this event saw him advance into the main draw for the first time as a “lucky loser” – benefitting from the late withdrawal of Tommy Paul despite losing in the final round of the qualifying event to Zach Svajda.

“It’s kind of a roller coaster of emotions,” said Quinn of his lucky loser status and his match with Boyer. “You go in for a match that you lost yesterday and you kind of sit down with your team and you talk about what kind of caused you to lose that match. And so, focused a lot on a little bit of the negative things and then find out that you’re lucky loser and you’re like, ‘Oh, I get a chance right away to kind of correct those and fix the things that went wrong yesterday.’ And I kind of did that today as right as we got on court this morning for a warm-up, me and (coach) Brian (Garber) kind of sat down. We were like, all right, we need to really emphasize this in the warm-up, so that way you can feel good going into this match. And we did that and was able to kind of make it work. And then late in the match, that’s kind of what won it, is just having that confidence, because we did it this morning. The confidence of just absolutely ripping the backhand kind of got me through that match.”

Quinn seemed to poised to roll to a straight-set win over Boyer, ranked No. 113 and fresh off an impressive run through qualifying rounds to the second round of the Australian Open in January. Quinn led 6-2, 5-4, serving for the match and holding a match point, but was not able to close out the victory. He then lost the second-set tiebreaker 7-5, losing the last two points, and then went down a break in the third set and Boyer took a 5-3 lead in the final set. Boyer, like Quinn an hour earlier, was not able to serve out the match at 5-4, but did not reach match point. Quinn was able to keep the momentum and win the final set tiebreaker 7-2 to advance.

“A little bit of courage definitely got me through for sure, playing big on big points and kind of taking it rather than forcing him to have to give it to me,” Quinn said of his win. “I put a little bit of pressure on his hands by making in a lot of returns when he served for the match, which he did when I served for the match at 5-4 in the second set. So we played another hour and a half or so after that. So it took a while for me to kind of get through it, but I knew after he broke me when I was serving for the match that it’d kind of go back and forth that same way. It’s not hard serving guys out, especially on these courts with these balls. They kind of puff up a little bit, especially late in a ball change, so I just try to put pressure on them.”

Not only is Quinn known for winning the NCAA singles title as freshman (joining a select few to do so, including Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe), but also how he did it – coming back from quadruple match point down in the final when his opponent Andrej Styler of the University of Michigan served for the match and held a 40-0 lead with the no-ad scoring format. The confidence Quinn gained from having come back from such a deficit continues to serve him in tight situations he faces in pro tennis, he said.

“Every single time I’m down match points, I have this weird thought that, ‘All right, I can do it again,’” Quinn said. “My first Futures title I won saving four match points against August Holmgren (San Diego in 2022) and then obviously the NCAAs. So I’ve had a history of saving match points in big matches and big tournaments. And so I draw on that a lot of the times. I’m never out until the last point. And so you saw that again today.”

After also reaching the second round of the ATP 500-level event in Dallas, losing in three-sets to No. 9-ranked Tommy Paul, Quinn is creeping closer to the top 100 rankings. Entering Delray Beach, he sits at a career-high of No. 150, which will firmly get him direct entry into the qualifying rounds of Grand Slam tournaments and likely into some ATP Tour qualifying events. When Quinn began his freshman season playing for the Georgia Bulldogs in September of 2022, his ATP ranking was No. 485. After 12 months of playing pro tennis, he ranked No. 250 and had graduated full-time to playing on the second-tier Challenger Tour, playing his last Futures-level event in Wichita, Kansas in June of 2024. Since then, including the 2025 Delray Beach Open, Quinn has played 15 Challengers mixed in with five ATP Tour-level events in the main draw or qualifying. Now, with each win, especially when he gets his cracks on the ATP Tour, Quinn moves closer and closer to becoming a full-time player in “The Show.”