Alex Michelsen tries to catch up to friendly rival Learner Tien with Indian Wells upset

Alex Michelsen followed good friend Learner Tien into the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open, knocking out No. 7 seed Taylor Fritz, 6-4, 7-6 (6) to clinch a career-best result at a Sunshine Swing tournament.

The youngsters are inexorably linked as a pair of rising stars from Southern California, and Michelsen admitted Tien’s upset of Ben Shelton added extra motivation to match his friendly rival against Fritz on Monday:

Q. Seeing Learner beat Ben yesterday, did that in any way fire you up to come out on this one?

ALEX MICHELSEN: I mean, yeah, a little bit. I was super happy for him. I talked to him after the match. I was texting him, and he texted me after I won today.

Yeah, it's always nice when we try and go like this to each other, try and one-up each other. He's definitely beating me right now, so I have to catch him eventually. It's really fun.

We're both doing super well at the same tournament. Doesn't happen very often, but we're enjoying it a lot, and we're rooting for each other, for sure.

Q. You and Learner both came up through kind of the cauldron of the Southern California very competitive section. Give me some thoughts on how that helped you become a pro player.

ALEX MICHELSEN: Growing up, everyone in our section was super, super good. Learner was always at the top. He was at the top since he was 12. I wasn't always at the top.

There were so many good guys. A lot of them I'm still friends with, because we played the same tournaments for years and years. I think that really helped my development. You don't have to travel a lot. If you're from Nebraska, you've got to go somewhere else, right?

I was super lucky, never really had to drive more than an hour to tournaments growing up. Great competition, great training. Got super lucky there.

While Tien is indeed closing in on a Top 20 debut—kicking off the year with a run to the Australian Open quarterfinals—Michelsen isn’t too far behind. He peaked at No. 30 in the ATP rankings last summer after reaching his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal at the National Bank Open in Toronto.

Standing between Michelsen and another quarterfinal is either No. 11 seed Daniil Medvedev or Sebastian Baez.