Tennis late-bloomers are rare. One American at the Australian Open just needed injuries to stop – The Athletic

And just like that, here comes another late-blooming tennis player from College Station, Texas.

In October 2025, Arthur Rinderknech, a college player for Texas A&M from 2013 to 2018, broke into the top 30 for the first time in his career, at 27.

He did it by reaching the final of the Shanghai Masters, where he lost to his cousin, Valentin Vacherot of Monaco. Vacherot, who had followed Rinderknech to College Station, won the tournament a rung below the Grand Slams ranked world No. 204, beating 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic on his way to his first ATP Tour title at 26.

Now comes 26-year-old Patrick Kypson, who spent just one semester at Texas A&M in 2018, but lived with Rinderknech and grew close with Vacherot as well. He’s got a way to go to match them. But after years of injuries, Kypson recently showed some hints of form — and health.

Last fall, while Rinderknech and Vacherot were on the way to their family final in Shanghai, Kypson was playing for a wild card entry into the main draw of the Australian Open.

From the end of September until early November, he played five ATP Challenger Tour events. He made the final of three of them, winning two. He made the semifinals of another.

In the process, he collected enough ranking points to beat out Martin Damm for the lone U.S. wild card to the year’s first Grand Slam, awarded to the best performer in that time whose ranking is not high enough to get them in. The U.S. Tennis Association grants Tennis Australia a wild card for the U.S. Open, by way of thanks.

Why the relative success now, after years of toiling?

Kypson, whose first-round match sees him face Argentina’s qualifier Francisco Comesaña, said it’s mostly the result of being injury-free. But he’s also trying to judge himself on process, rather than outcomes.

“I’m just trying to take this mindset that I’ve been working on for the last six months and judge myself on that, as opposed to winning and losing the match,” he said during an interview in December.

“If I can do that and execute on it well, then, ironically, I think that’s the best.”

Patrick Kypson is another tennis player whose college years have come to define their career.

These are the things one learns after a while in tennis. For a growing number of top pros, some of those lessons are taking place in college, which has become an increasingly popular pathway to the top 50 in recent years. Late-bloomers don’t really exist at the top of the sport, and even further down, significant career changes rarely happen down the stretch.

Kypson said he wanted to go to college, but only briefly. After winning the U.S. boys’ national championship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2017, and earning the wild card into the U.S. Open that comes with it, he was in a hurry to get on with his professional career. He signed up to spend the spring semester at Texas A&M in 2018 to get some final seasoning, and then planned to leave after the NCAA tournament.

Steve Denton, the former pro and longtime coach at Texas A&M, wasn’t so sure that was the best idea. During a recent interview, Denton said he told Kypson his tennis was good enough to win matches on the ATP Tour. Denton was more concerned about whether Kypson’s teenage body could withstand its rigor.

This concern is not specific to Kypson, who is now 6ft 2in and plenty strong. Many dominant college players find the physical transition to professional tennis more challenging than the tactical one.

“A lot of them are not physically mature enough to stay out there week after week after week,” Denton said. “That is why some players take a little longer to break through. They figure how much to rest and train, and then they have a chance to make a run.”

Kypson, who grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, said he has no regrets about his decision to leave college so quickly, even though he might be the avatar of the phenomenon Denton described. Almost as soon as he left Texas A&M, he caught the injury bug.

In January of 2019, after just six months as a professional, came the first in a series of stress fractures to his playing elbow, which made him miss most of that season. The Covid-19 pandemic knocked out 2020. In 2021, elbow surgery sidelined him for months.

So he came back. He played. Too much too soon. A torn oblique muscle. Another couple months out.

He then enjoyed about two years of decent health, qualifying for the 2023 French Open and the 2024 Australian Open. Then, a meniscus tear, during that year’s Wimbledon qualifying. Kypson had surgery, but then rushed to get back in time to qualify for the U.S. Open, figuring that if Djokovic and Taylor Fritz could do it, why could’t he?

He has pain in that knee to this day.

“Scar tissue. All the all the things that happen when you rush a joint that just had surgery into professional sport a little bit early,” he said.

Then, last year in Australia, he broke his left foot. A third surgery, and another three-and-a-half months on the sidelines.

“Probably the toughest injury of my career,” Kypson said. His ranking tumbled to 455. The only thing to do was live and learn.

“I have the tendency to over-train, to push too hard,” he said. “I obviously can’t give that direct correlation to injuries that I’ve had, but it’s certainly possible that there’s things I’ve done and hours I’ve put in that maybe I shouldn’t have, that contributed to the injuries.”

If Kypson can stay healthy, Denton swears he has a chance to have a legitimate career. He says Kypson has a high tennis IQ, great shot selection, a big forehand he uses effectively, good hands around the net, and an improving transition game.

“He’s gotten more aggressive, tried to finish at the net more and gotten closer to the baseline, he said. “There are tactical things he’s trying, like trying to play a bit more aggressive on the bigger points.”

Kypson thinks his current game can maintain a ranking of about 150, but that’s not where, or who, he wants to be.

“Play on my own terms as opposed to sitting back and waiting for things to come to you,” is how he put it.

“The game has gotten faster and everyone’s hitting the ball really well. It doesn’t just come to you if you wait for it anymore.”