By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
It is said that playing full-time on the professional tennis tour takes about two years to get used to the machinations of a career as a professional tennis player.
Ethan Quinn is right on schedule.
The 2023 NCAA singles champion from the University of Georgia broke into the top 100 of the ATP Tour singles rankings for the 2025 season, exactly two years since he turned pro after a year of college tennis. Quinn’s 2025 season began at No. 203 as he began his season in the qualifying rounds of the Canberra Challenger in Australia. At the end of the year, his year-end ranking was No. 70 and he competed in the main draw of three of the four major tournaments, highlighted by a third-round appearance at Roland Garros.
At the season-opening Challenger in Canberra, Quinn not only made it through the qualifying rounds to the main round, but also to the final, where he lost to Brazilian sensation Joao Fonseca. In his transition from Challenger player to ATP Tour level player, the Fresno, California native earned the most match wins in the qualifying rounds. He nearly broke the ATP Tour record for advancing through qualifying into the main draw of an ATP event the most times when he accomplished the trick nine times in the 2025 season, one point shy of the ATP Tour single-season record. (He did, however, come out of qualifying as a lucky loser one more time in Delray Beach, Florida.) Had Quinn won final-round qualifiers at two of his final events of the year in Vienna and Stockholm, he would have set a new record and become an obscure part of ATP Tour history.
Quinn’s career-high ranking of No. 64 from November is the third-highest former University of Georgia ATP player behind John Isner, who was ranked No. 8, and Mikael Pernfors, who was ranked No. 10, and ahead of Norman Holmes, who was ranked No. 70 in 1976.
Speaking at the 2025 US Open after losing in the first round in singles but reaching the round of 16 in doubles, Quinn spoke of the mindset shift that many professionals have to make when they first adjust to playing on the ATP Tour.
“A good week sometimes just means winning a game,” he said. “The level out here is very, very good. It doesn’t matter if you’re 120 or 60 in the world, the level is very high. It’s hard to win games. So you try to turn your mind around and say, ‘Oh, winning a first round every week, that’s good.’ So now it’s about going through that and trying to put together two games in a row, maybe three games in a row.”
Quinn finished the 2025 season with a 12-18 season record, but it also moved him up 133 spots in the ATP Tour rankings and earned him $899,486 in prize money.
“It’s just about finding ways to play your best level of tennis in the first round but keep playing at that level because if you show up in the first round and don’t play your best, you’re going to lose, and then in the second round you’re playing against an even better player than the first one,” he said. “You’re playing against a seeded player who might have a bye. So it becomes really difficult and you just try to put together as many games as you can.”
Quinn won his first ATP Tour level singles match in the main draw at the Dallas Open in February, defeating Trevor Svajda in the first round after winning two matches in the qualifying rounds before losing to world No. 9 and his training partner Tommy Paul. The following week, he entered the main draw of the Delray Beach Open via a “lucky loser” spot as an alternate after losing in the final round of the qualifying draw. It was in Delray Beach where Quinn said he was starting to find his feet on the ATP Tour versus Challenger events.
“Now I’m moving up to the ATP Tour rather than the Challenger Tour,” he said of fellow American Tristan Boyer after his first-round win in Delray Beach, as you can read here: https://primenewsdesk.co.in/ethan-quinn-and-the-progression-of-a-pro-tennis-player-at-the-delray-beach-open/24533 “So I’m learning things and the ins and outs of the ATP Tour. I’ve got this Feeling like I almost didn’t make it through the Challenger tournament, but now I know how I can’t really make it through some Challenger tournaments. The changes are a lot longer on the ATP Tour and you think, “Wow, that’s a lot longer than the Challenger Tour.” So I’m kind of learning to deal with that and the disappointment of the last few games and then get fired up for the next game. You really have to see and feel the changes and the only way to do that is to play more tournaments.”
Quinn said the highlight of his 2025 season was reaching the third round of Roland Garros after advancing to the main draw via qualifying, the first time he had competed in a main draw of a Grand Slam tournament without the comfort of a main draw wildcard. After capitalizing on an injury to Grigor Dimitrov that allowed him to advance to the second round, Quinn won a five-set thriller – the first five-set match and first win of his professional career – defeating Alexander Shevchenko 6-4, 4-6, 6-7(5), 7-6(3), 7-5. He then played another five-set match in the next round, but lost to 35th-ranked Tallon Griekspoor 4:6, 6:1, 2:6, 6:1, 6:4.
“The French Open is something I’m looking at a lot,” Quinn said of his 2025 highlight at the 2025 US Open. “Being able to qualify by playing three strong opponents and then being able to play two consecutive five-set matches… that’s not easy. I’ve never done that before and kind of went into a slam, or actually it’s my first main draw since the USTA gave me a wild card here a few years ago. It has “It’s given me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season and I know that the training I’m doing is getting me where I need to be. I know I have to push even harder now.”
The result in Paris brought Quinn into the top 100 for the first time. He won first-round main draw matches at five of his next six ATP events, including Wimbledon, his first major tournament as a direct entrant rather than via a wild card or qualification. Quinn said winning so many first-round games (11 total over the course of the 2025 season) was also a highlight of his season.
“It’s not that easy to win first rounds and for me to be able to do that just shows that I compete week in and week out and I’m always able to put out a product that I’m really happy with,” he said. “It’s not easy to show every single game and I feel like I’ve done that really well this season and I think as I progress this season and go into next season I would really like to be able to offer a better product for more games in a row. To be able to win the first rounds a little easier. I’ve won a lot of seven, six games in the third round this year so it’s a little easier for me to win games, or even easier in the first round and then I try to to improve myself.” my tournaments until the second round.”
Before starting his freshman year at the University of Georgia, Quinn said he wanted to follow in the footsteps of fellow tennis standout Ben Shelton of the Southeastern Conference’s University of Florida, as he explained at the $15,000 Futures-level event of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation Tennis Championships in Vero Beach here: https://youtu.be/IvW3Fl1a4jg?si=XxoOeo1CcsvYjMQa And that’s what he did when he succeeded Shelton will be the 2023 NCAA singles champion, a year after Shelton won the title. In 2026, Quinn will no doubt be aiming to match Shelton’s success on the ATP Tour, and he is targeting deep runs at Grand Slam events and a top-10 finish.