Who is Janice Tjen? Indonesian trailblazer with uncanny Ashleigh Barty likeness into Sao Paolo final

One of the stories from the opening day of the US Open is that of Janice Tjen. The Indonesian ace who already made history by becoming the first from her nation to reach the main draw of a Grand Slam since 2004.

But she has gone one better registering a shock win to see off Veronika Kudermetova and reach the second round where a tie against Emma Raducanu now awaits. Likely with big billing on a main court, Tjen will get to live her dream but who is the 23-year-old?

Tjen was born on 6 May 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia. She is the first Indonesian player in a Grand Slam main draw since Angelique Widjaja in 2004. But she has gone the route that many have gone before her and despite turning pro in 2018, she studied at college in the States before making her main Grand Slam bow.

First of all for a year at Oregon between 2020-2021 and at Pepperdine University for three years between 2021-2024. Just for winning one game, she is already up to World No.126 achieving a career high of 147 already recently. She was selected to represent Indonesia at the 2022 Asian Games and won the bronze medal in doubles.

From there she has mainly grinded away on the ITF circuit achieving an astonishing win rate of 13 titles with three lost finals too so 16 in all in just over a year. She won three titles all in Monastir in one month last June on the W15 circuit and then graduated to winning on W35 last December in Tauranga, New Zealand. She has since played a mix of W15, W35 and W50 tournaments winning her biggest in June in Taizhou defeating Yang Yidi 7-5, 6-3 in the final. She then went on to reach her biggest finals in July and August which are the mark of where her form is at.

She lost to established Chinese star Wang Xiyu 6-3, 2-6, 4-6 in favour of the victor then went on to lose narrowly to Petra Marcinko in the final of the Landisville Challenge in the US just recently. She also beat Alexandra Eala and Taylah Preston in finals as a junior.

Her ranking as a result of this success was high enough that she could enter qualifying as a rank outsider and she managed to take down the 22nd seed Varvara Lepchenko without much of an issue 6-3, 6-1 before seeing off Maja Chwalinska 7-5, 7-5. The third seed Aoi Ito was seen off 6-1, 6-2 in the most emphatic win of all to qualify.

Being a bit of an unknown entity can either be an easy win for the bigger name or all kinds of problems and Veronika Kudermetova found out the hard way being dumped out on Sunday 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in favour of Tjen who now gets to face Raducanu on Wednesday who no doubt would've been expecting to face the Russian who herself has had a resurgence as of late. So it could again go one of two ways.

Ben Rothenberg (prominent tennis journalist) also floated which was then confirmed by Matt Trollope who works as a content producer for Australian Open that she shares an uncanny likeness with a certain Ashleigh Barty in regards to how she plays.

In terms of playing style and presentation which was confirmed as being accurate so while others may have followed Sharapova, Serena Williams among others are we finally seeing the first Ashleigh Barty clone emerging out of the next crop of tennis stars?

While it didn't work against Emma Raducanu it has in Sao Paolo this week with the Indonesian reaching the final after taking down Alexandra Eala along the way to do it.