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Tomic may have support in Aussie revival

01/19/2012 01:37:01 PM

While Aussie teen sensation Bernard Tomic has grabbed all the headlines at Melbourne Park this week and been heralded as the saviour of men's tennis in this country, two of his other less profile countrymen have suggested the sport's resurrection Down Under may yet be a team effort.

There's little question that 19-year-old Tomic's future is brighter than a Times Square neon light which graduated from Harvard.

His impressive come-from-behind wins against 22nd seed Fernando Verdasco and America's Sam Querrey in the first two rounds of the Australian Open are testament to that.

But a pair of Aussie Grand Slam debutants in James Duckworth and Matthew Ebden showed enough in their second-round losses at Melbourne Park on Thursday to make Tomic think that he might not be headed for a solo voyage under the weight of an ATP Tour success-starved nation's expectations over the next decade.

Duckworth, who turns 20 on Saturday, put up an excellent fight in just his fifth ATP Tour match, taking the first set before succumbing to his much more fancied opponent Janko Tipsarevic 3-6 6-2 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 in a match which lasted three hours and 11 minutes.

And Ebden was in the box seat to reach the third round when he found himself up two sets to love against No.24 seed Kei Nishikori on Margaret Court Arena.

Unfortunately for the 24-year-old he lost his composure after losing the third set to fall 3-6 1-6 6-4 6-1 6-1 in three hours.

But Duckworth and Ebden should both take solace from the fact that they forced two of the world's best players to dig deep and play some of their top-shelf tennis to gain passage to the round of 32.

Tipsarevic hit 42 winners and Nishikori ended up recording 38 as they eventually made their way past the Australian pair.

While Duckworth and Ebden are well and truly in the embryonic stages of their professional tennis careers, the signs are good.

Australia haven't had a group of super-talented men running around doing their country proud at the same time since Lleyton Hewitt, Pat Rafter and Mark Philippoussis were at the peak of their powers on the ATP Tour some years ago.

No one is suggesting that the trio of Tomic, Duckworth and Ebden are or will be anything like the aforementioned three pillars of Australia's last golden period, but there now at least appears to be some light at the end of the dark and long tunnel.

It took 10 years for the last significant Australian men's Grand Slam drought to be broken when Rafter claimed the 1997 US Open a long while after Pat Cash won the 1987 Wimbledon crown.

Are we jumping the gun a bit by noting that it has also been a decade since Hewitt clinched the last major tournament by an Aussie male at the All England Club?

Possibly.

 
Photograph Copyright : Getty Images

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