Thanks to Chris Eubanks, tennis dreamers could imagine the feeling of making a Wimbledon run

Before his quarterfinal at Wimbledon, Chris Eubanks was chatting on the practice court with ESPN’s Pam Shriver. She listed the names of the players left in the men’s draw: “Djokovic, Alcaraz, Medvedev, Sinner, Rune and…Eubanks.” It drew a smile, as intended, from the American. He had no trouble admitting that his name sounded a little strange in that company.

That was a big part of the beauty of Eubanks’ run to the Wimbledon quarters: He was the everyman, living out the fantasy of every tennis player and fan. Eubanks wasn’t groomed for greatness from birth. As a kid, he wasn’t touted as a future Top 10 player. He wasn’t a coddled or sequestered super-jock in training. He took the long way—the college and Challenger route—to get here, and developed an intelligent, regular-guy personality along the way.

When Eubanks beat Stefanos Tsitsipas on Monday, he walked out to the middle of the court, raised his arms high over his head, and soaked in the massive cheers. It was a gesture of victory that he may have learned from Juan Martin del Potro or Rafael Nadal. Seeing Chris Eubanks, part-time Tennis Channel commentator, playing the God-like figure was both surreal and more real than normal. With him, you could imagine what it felt like, and even feel a little of it with him.

You could also hear it in his words. We’ve had many other Cinderella figures in tennis, but rarely are they as able to express what the experience is like as well or as relatably as Eubanks did. He smiled when he hit good shots, he clapped when a fan caught a ball that had flown into the stands, he made the audience part of his team.

Here’s how he described his Wednesday morning, when he suddenly found himself at the center of world—i.e., social-media—attention.

“I had about five minutes after waking up where I looked at my phone; it’s like an instinct, you wake up, you check Twitter to see what’s happened overnight, almost like a newspaper,” he said. “It was just constant me. I was just like, ‘This is so weird.’

“I looked at it, I was like, ‘Man, I’m really about to play a Grand Slam quarterfinal today. I thought that was a really, really cool cool thing.’”

Eubanks said he enjoyed most of that quarterfinal, against Daniil Medvedev, even though it ended in heartbreaking, five-set defeat. For three of those sets, he was the more dynamic and exciting player. His lightning-fast serve-forehand combinations had the No. 1 Court crowd in full roar and ready to help him cross the finish line and complete the upset.

But there’s a downside to Eubanks’ strokes: They’re pretty long—especially on the backhand side—and low-margin; grinding through lengthy rallies will never be his thing. Not surprisingly, his strokes showed their cracks at the tensest moment of the afternoon: 3-3 in the fourth-set tiebreaker, when he was four points from the win.

I looked at it, I was like, ‘Man, I’m really about to play a Grand Slam quarterfinal today. I thought that was a really, really cool cool thing.’ —Chris Eubanks

That was probably the moment when the possibility of victory became real to him. Realizing you might win a big match can be the toughest thing to overcome in tennis. Instead of cracking his forehand for a winner, he sent one wide to go down 3-5. Instead of putting an easy volley into the open court, he put one in the bottom of the net to lose the set. From there, Medvedev was home free, and the Eubanks’ bubble had finally burst.

“It was definitely a fun match to be a part of,” Eubanks said. “I think the fans definitely got their money’s worth of entertainment and good quality tennis. Just got edged out. Daniil is one of the best players in the world, one of the toughest players to beat for a reason. I think he showcased that well. He played exceptionally well in clutch, fourth-set breaker.”

Eubanks was the last American player in either singles draw, but his run reinforces the strength-in-numbers quality of the U.S. game right now. Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe stumbled, but he, Jessica Pegula, and Madison Keys made the second week. Is this kind of success repeatable for him? Eubanks admits that he’ll probably never be Mr. Consistency.

“I went for my shots,” he said of his match with Medvedev. “I’m OK with living and dying by the mistakes. There are going to be days where I have a high unforced errors count. I know that comes with the game style, and I’m OK with that.”

But now he also knows that he can match his attack up with anyone else’s, including those names—Djokovic, Alcaraz, Medvedev, Sinner—that Shriver mentioned to him this morning.

“You belong,” she told Eubanks.

He didn’t deny it.