After "reality check," Ethan Quinn starts to meet his expectations

There isn’t much room for error, or even a less-than-perfect shot at the wrong time, in men’s tennis these days. Ethan Quinn found that out—again—in his fourth-round loss to Holger Rune in Tokyo on Saturday.

Right out of the gate, Quinn fell behind 30-40 on his serve. In the next rally, he moved forward for a short ball and took a crack at a backhand approach. But he didn’t completely connect on it, and the ball sat up just long enough for Rune to have a look at a backhand pass. A former Top 10 player isn’t going to miss many of those, and the Dane didn’t, rifling the ball at Quinn’s feet for the early break.

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And that, essentially, was the end of the set for Quinn. He hung in over the next nine games, saving break points and testing Rune on his serve, but he couldn’t catch up. Rune won the first set 6-4, and the second 6-2, and sent Quinn off to the airport, where he’ll fly to his next tournament, in Shanghai.

Read more: Carlos Alcaraz after Tokyo injury: "I have the best physio in the world"

Still, the 21-year-old Fresno native will likely be happy with his week in Japan. He won two qualifying matches, including a tight one over Mattia Bellucci, and then knocked off his higher-ranked countryman, Alex Michelsen, before losing to Rune. Not a spectacular performance, or a major breakthrough, but the type of result that has sent Quinn to a career-high ranking of No. 80 this season. Now in his third year on tour, he knows that any main-draw win at a 500-level event like Tokyo qualifies as a success.

“This is kind of what I expected when I first turned pro,” Quinn says of his 2025 campaign.

“I had this delusional expectation I was gonna come on tour and I was gonna crush it, I was gonna be Top 75 in the world right away. I thought it was gonna be so easy coming out of college.

“Life gave me a reality check.”

Looking back, it’s hard to fault him for his youthful exuberance.

When he left the University of Georgia after three semesters to turn pro in 2023, Quinn seemed to have all the tools, and the right results, for a successful career.

A lanky 6-foot-3, he excelled at the two most important shots in today’s game, the serve and forehand. He also had a smooth two-handed backhand, and a wide wingspan at net. He was a finalist at the 18-and-under Nationals at Kalamazoo in 2022, and he only improved at Georgia, where he won the NCAA singles title in the spring of 2023. He even had a mentor, in Brad Stine, who has worked with Jim Courier, Mardy Fish, and Tommy Paul, and who understood exactly what his latest pupil would be facing on tour.

Read more: Ethan Quinn pushes forward in Paris, with help from Tommy Paul's coaching team

Unfortunately, one thing Stine understood is that even the best young U.S. prospects tend to get knocked down a peg or two in the pros. Paul, Taylor Fritz, and Frances Tiafoe were all standout juniors, but none found their footing on tour right away. Each took a roundabout route, full of peaks and valleys, before they established themselves as top-tier players and Grand Slam threats.

I had this delusional expectation I was gonna come on tour and I was gonna crush it. ... Life gave me a reality check. - Ethan Quinn

Quinn already knows that bumpy road well. Instead of racking up ATP wins right away, he spent most of 2023 and 2024 traveling the back roads of the Challenger circuit. Instead of scaling the rankings, he finished his rookie year at No. 344, and his second year at No. 202. Meanwhile, Michelsen, who debuted around the same time as Quinn, rose into the Top 30 pretty rapidly.

“2024 was really difficult,” Quinn says. “I thought I was gonna explode then. I thought I was gonna take that turn that I needed, and I didn’t do it then, either. It was really difficult for me to kind of process that.”

How did he finally take that turn, or begin to take it, in 2025? By leaving all of his expectations behind. Two years of frustration and lack of progress left Quinn with little choice, he says, except to “put my head down.”

“Our whole mentality this year has been blue collar,” he says. “To say, ‘Nothing comes easy.’ Once we were able to shift that, things were able to change. We look at each match as just a match, rather than a win or a loss. If I win, OK, great, it’s a chance for me to play another match.”

Along with those mental lessons, Quinn has learned physical ones as well. In an 11-month season, with another match always around the corner, recovery becomes paramount, he says. That starts with what he puts in his body—and how much he spends on it.

“When I went on tour, I was cost-efficient,” Quinn says. “I was thinking, ‘If I eat this, I don’t need to spend money on that.’ It hurt me. I didn’t have enough fuel for the next day. I had to make sure I was spending the proper amount at dinner, making sure I was full when I left. Once I figured that out, I was able to get to the next level.”

Along with more food, Quinn, like every young and growing tennis player, needed more protein. You can see it right on his shirt sleeves, where the word “Orgain” is stamped. Orgain makes the protein shakes that are a regular part of Quinn’s diet. He drinks them twice day on practice days, and right after matches, “trying to overload my body with protein.”

“It’s all natural, with real food ingredients,” he says, “so I’m not really worried about what I’m putting in my body. As a pro athlete, that’s something I care about a lot."

Quinn is coached by Brian Garber, but still hears from Stine. Their hometown, Fresno, Calif., may not seem like a tennis mecca, but Stine had an academy there at just the right time for Quinn, who started attending at age 6.

“He was kind of like a dad for me,” Quinn says. “He’s given me tough love, and I think that’s partially because I’ve known him for so many years. He knows the moments to kind of rip into me, and when to be a supporting figure."

Our whole mentality this year has been blue collar. To say, ‘Nothing comes easy.’ Once we were able to shift that, things were able to change. - Ethan Quinn

Quinn’s goal is to find the same consistency that his fellow Americans—Fritz, Paul, Tiafoe, and now Ben Shelton—have achieved after much effort. He hopes the adversity he faced early will pay off for him, the way it seemingly has for them.

“I think it was really good for my development to have those struggles,” Quinn says. “If you just pop up, and then have a little bit of a struggle, you really don’t know what to do.

“There’s a lot more room for growth for my game.”