What has Learner Tien learned ahead of facing Jannik Sinner at Indian Wells?

While Ben Shelton and Learner Tien were warming up for their recent match at the BNP Paribas Open a few days ago, Tennis Channel analyst Jim Courier mused over the contrast between the two young men.

“When Ben Shelton walks into a room, you go, ‘Oh, that guy's an athlete. He's a specimen. He's not like us.’ And then Lerner Tien walks in, and he's pretty unassuming. He's graceful. He's smooth. You can tell that he's got something going on, but you're not sure what it is. Is he, like, a tech wizard? Is he, you know, a violinist? What is it?”

What he is, as Courier went on to describe to his listeners, is nothing less than an exceptional, perhaps generational athlete much like his mold-busting current coach, Michael Chang. To assign Tien an occupation, just add the modifier “tennis” to the noun, “magician.”

Read more: Learner Tien flashed back to being a kid during Indian Wells upset of Ben Shelton

The ability to win when you’re playing poorly is a skill that your typical tennis professional  lusts for, and which great players master—often years into a career. Tien, a 20-year old from Irvine, Calif., already has that talent. He demonstrated on Tuesday afternoon, when he became the youngest American man in this century to advance to the quarterfinals of the what is arguably the premier Masters 1000 event on the calendar.

Tien was obliged to stare down two match points in his battle with Alejandro Davidovich Fokina before winning 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (4). Afterwards, Tien told reporters, “[in the first set] I felt just a little down energy-wise, and my thoughts were just kind of everywhere. I don't know how I really managed to get it together ... I just did a good job trying to hang around and give myself a shot.”

Tien, the No. 25 seed, had better not be off his feed again on Thursday, if he hopes to earn a berth in the semifinals by toppling No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner.

Davidovich Fokina is both a hard-luck case and a hard out. In outlasting him, Tien demonstrated why Courier anointed him with the noun, “exceptional.”  Tien has not had the degree of experience that players accumulate on their way to greatness, but he already shares their special sensibility. He knows how to win the way a dog knows where a bone is buried. A lefty, Tien plays the game as if there were no net, and no lines—and none of the pressure that comes with those features. That makes it easier to seek—and achieve—a flow state. That’s something you simply cannot teach.

[When] I'm at my best, I feel like I'm not making that many mistakes. Learner Tien

Here’s another piece of the tennis wisdom for the ages: If you repeatedly hit the ball over the net forcefully, as close to the lines as possible, you can be well nigh unbeatable. Call it the Monica Seles school of strategy. Just being bold—or is it crazy?—enough to play that way is a reward unto itself, and it unnerves opponents. That may be why Davidovich Fokina looked so much more rattled than his opponent in the late stages of a match in which Tien banged out a whopping 32 unforced errors—yet kept going for, and clipping, lines.

The ability to handle frustration is another talent most potent in undiluted form, when it’s resident in a player rather than a learned strategy. Tien managed his frustrations in the match with the patience of a saint. He seemed confident that while things would go pear-shaped now and then, all would eventually turn out okay. And across the net, the 26-year old Spaniard flailed his arms and cast looks of helplessness at his coaches every time a Tien winner glanced off a line at a key moment.

And oh those key moments. The match points, both in the 10th game of the third set, with Tien serving, were the most obvious ones.  At 30-40 Tien saved the first one with a daring, net-skimming, sharply-angled scoop forehand hit from a near split. He dispatched the second match point by delivering an unreturnable serve.

“I don't actually know how I hit that last shot [on the first match point],” Tien said. It was maybe a little bit lucky.”

The contrast in Tien’s upcoming quarterfinal battle will be intriguing. Sinner is one of the few players who hits with the same combination of pace and precision that Tien brings to the table, although at a magnified level. And he has a glaring height advantage. Sinner is a very rangy 6-foot-3, while Tien is just 5-foot-11. Count on the Italian champ tracking and returning more balls than Davidovich Fokina (who is the same height as Tien) did, and with greater sting. Sinner’s net coverage will also be superior, while his serve is markedly better than Davidovich Fokina’s.

As a four-time Grand Slam champion, Sinner has vastly more experience. But that may not amount to much of an advantage because of Tien’s poise and fearlessness. The X-factor may be the lefty juju that Tien will bring to the contest. Sinner is most devastating when he is up against someone who plays with set patterns (which is one of the reasons freewheeling Carlos Alcaraz enjoys success against him), but Tien can avoid them. He has the racquet skills to mix things up, and the precision to put even the most dangerous rivals into uncomfortable positions with great consistency.

“[When] I'm at my best, I feel like I'm not making that many mistakes,” Tien said after a win earlier in the tournament. ”I feel like my patterns I'm playing are a bit more unpredictable. I think that I'm really placing the shots kind of where I want to put them. Shot selection is like a big part of my game.”

Strategic flexibility is another strong point of Tien’s. He can throw—and keep—opponents off-balance with his variety, but also through his own facility for shape-shifting, a knack for doing what needs to be done as determined by an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

“From the first point,” he said, “you're pretty much adapting to what the other guy throws at you. Tennis IQ is [about] navigating that [challenge]. It could be shot selection, it could be where you serve from, where you receive, what you expect.”

But the most helpful facility of all for Tien will be his innate sensibility. Sinner smothers opponents. When he applies pressure, which is always, he can make small errors appear critical and missed opportunities seem catastrophic. Tien has the antidote to that.

“I try to approach each point like it has equal value,” Tien said. “I feel like that [ability] sometimes helps take the nerves away on some of these big points, these big games.”

That’s just one more belief that is difficult and perhaps even impossible to teach. It seems the height of irony that Tien was named “Learner,” when so much of what makes him a great talent has been there from the start, baked into his athletic DNA.