John Millman and friends including James Duckworth contest a weekly trivia competition across the road from his home in Brisbane, where he admits that few of the regulars at the Norman Park Bowls club could correctly answer this: who is Australia's third-ranked male tennis player behind Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic?
"Ah, maybe my sisters would know, 'Ducks' would probably know, and that's about it," laughs world No.66 Millman, the Australian No.3. "But I'm fine with that, to be honest with you. I've always just played tennis because I love it, I love the competition, and I love meeting new people and I really like travelling the world. So I'll let the other boys have the spotlight a little bit, and I don't mind being the quiet achiever."
Or the battler/late bloomer/journeyman, almost the anti-Kyrgios/Tomic, unlucky with injuries and an all-round good bloke. As recently as 2014, the 26-year-old was working at a friend's financial services office as he endured a long rehabilitation from surgery to repair a serious labrum tear in his shoulder, uncertain when or if he would be able to play tennis again.
Now, he has earned a main-draw debut at the French Open and, almost certainly, direct entry to Wimbledon for the first time, and this week starts a slightly abbreviated claycourt season with the first of two $100,000 Challenger events in Asia. South Korea, specifically, which hosted one of the many Millman stories that illustrate what it is to be competing at the less glamorous levels of the game.
It was at a lowly Futures event in Gimchon a few years back, when, unable to afford a taxi from the site to the hotel, and having waited about four hours for the second of the day's only two shuttles, Millman and fellow Australian Matt Barton could stomach no more of the terrible tournament food and so ordered a Domino's pizza.
To their great mirth and disbelief, as they were watching the tense latter stages of the day's last doubles match, the pizza was delivered in a tuk-tuk that was driven straight up the courtside gate by a local who demanded payment from the player who was about to return serve in the super tiebreak. "Matty has it on film, and it's hilarious," Millman recalls. "There's so many of those moments, and it makes you appreciate it more when you have your good times in the main draws of the slams and bigger tournaments."
Most often, the Australian Open is where Millman is asked about life at the far-from-pointy end of the game, and the once-a-year tennis scribes are surprised by the answers. But such is the reality for those struggling merely to survive in this highly competitive global game, Millman having tweeted recently what he is not shy to remind the ATP player council representatives: that more than just the privileged few inside the top 100 should be able to make a living from tennis.
In his younger days, he slept at the Barcelona airport, the Milan train station, and on plenty more floors besides. "I'm no special case there – in fact, the large, large majority of players are doing it extremely tough, and that's why I think more of them should be making money. The grand slams are so glamorous and you're staying in nice hotels or apartments ... it's beautiful. And then there's the flipside."
Not that Kyrgios or Tomic could really relate, for both top-twentysomethings were wealthy Wimbledon quarter-finalists with huge endorsement deals while still in their teens. "I just think it's one of those things that you've either lived it or you haven't," says Millman. "When I finished school here in Brisbane and I decided I was going to play the tennis (circuit), I never thought I'd be in Korea having pizzas delivered to the returner of serve. And when I dreamed of playing tennis, I never thought that I'd be sleeping on floors of airports.
"You dream of playing the slams, cos that's what you see on TV. Bernie and Nick and those guys are potentially lucky that they didn't have to do that, but at the end of the day they're stories for me and a lot of the other boys as well, and they're probably the ones that you kind-of remember at times, too."
Yet struggle street is becoming an old address for the Queenslander, who could lose in the first round of the next two majors and still pocket almost $95,000 to help fund the rest of his 11th professional season. He has the security, too, of knowing he does not have to grind through qualifying at Roland Garros next month or cross his fingers for the reciprocal wildcard he was granted back in 2013, but was forced by injury to relinquish to a certain talented young Greek-Malaysian lad from Canberra, instead.
This time, merci, his entry will be through the front door. "It's an awesome position to be in and I guess it's what drives you... I'm really excited. I love playing at Roland Garros, I think there's something special about playing on the clay there, it's a tough surface, points are physical and it's gonna be brilliant to have a go at playing in the main draw there this year."
Millman is proud of his top-three standing, the absence of Thanasi Kokkinakis notwithstanding, and particularly given the current resurgence in the local men's game. He stresses that satisfaction does not equate to fulfilment, or any lack of desire to press on further and higher, but does wish he had more confidence in himself earlier, while acknowledging all those who have believed in him through the darker days.
The player who turned pro in 2006 but did not win his first ATP main-draw match until 2013 can quip that one reason he is so different to young stars Kyrgios and Tomic is because his more modest successes have taken so long to achieve. "I've had to learn a fair few things along the way and I haven't really been in the spotlight as I was learning those things," he says. "So I've been brought up knowing that tennis isn't the be-all and end-all, and I'm very grateful to my parents for just instilling those types of values in me, and I'm really hopeful that I can keep going.
"But, to be honest with you, those boys have achieved so much success so early on, who knows what I would have been like if I was 20 and top 20 in the world? It's a remarkable achievement tennis-wise how well they're going, and it's good for me, too. Despite them being so young, Bernie and Nick are really setting the benchmark, and it gives me someone to try to chase down."
Millman only cracked the top 100 after 2015 Wimbledon, where he broke a nine-slam run of qualifying disappointments and then defeated world No.19 Tommy Robredo in the first round, only to suffer a five-set loss to Marcos Baghdatis in the second. As recently as August, 2014, he was ranked 1101st. "It hasn't been easy for me the whole way through. You're almost a little bit jealous of these types like Nick or the young American kid Taylor Fritz, or Alexander Zverev, because some of these kids make it look easy and almost (make) a mockery out of something that you work so hard for! But I'll be the first to admit it's taken me a long time to learn and understand my game a little bit better."
Now that he does, Millman says he is a better player than pre-surgery, when he first reached the top 130, and felt on the verge of that longed-for breakthrough. Before and after it, there have been big occasions, such as playing – and pushing to three sets in efforts that inspired outbreaks of the curious Queensland condition known as Millmania – superstars Andy Murray and Roger Federer at home on Pat Rafter Arena. This year, too, he faced Tomic on the middle Saturday night of the Australian Open on Rod Laver Arena.
So if Millman may pursue a career in finance when this first one is over, he will have no problem calculating which tennis experiences he treasures the most. They may not rank with Australia's greatest, but they are his, and the achievements of this self-described battler, and Australia's oldest Davis Cup "orange boy" have already surpassed what he imagined he could ever achieve.
"Especially in front of a local, vocal, Brisbane crowd, those are the moments where you're sitting behind a desk in an office that you can't emulate; that type of competition or that type of blood rush that you get," says Millman. "I know that when I stop playing tennis, those will be the moments for me. And it might seem small in comparison with some of our former players and the successes they've had, but for me they're pretty special times and ones that I'm really going to take with me forever."
