Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York Times
MELBOURNE, Australia — At the start of this year’s Australian Open, the French tennis player Lucas Pouille was a man severely overlooked.
He had come to Melbourne, after all, on the heels of a 2018 season that dripped with disappointing losses, trying more than anything else to simply recapture a sense of joy on the court.
Expectations? Any that existed were extremely slim, Pouille said, as he looked back Wednesday on a tournament that now stands as the most thrilling of his seven-year career. Slim, from those on the outside looking in, he said, and “even from myself.