MELBOURNE, Australia — The first two rounds of the Australian Open have let the outsiders in.
Tennys Sandgren, ranked 97th, said he watched Stan Wawrinka win the 2016 United States Open final in a bar.
“I was having a few beers,” Sandgren said of Wawrinka’s third major win. “I was watching the tennis, thinking: That’s insane — an inhuman level of tennis.”
On Thursday, an undaunted Sandgren beat ninth-seeded Wawrinka with some ease, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4. The men’s defending champion, Roger Federer, stayed on track to win a 20th Grand Slam title by beating Jan-Lennard Struff, 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (4).