Out at the Open

An interview with João Lucas Reis da Silva, who made history as the first openly gay man to play the Australian Open.

MELBOURNE, Australia — G’day from the end of a busy opening day of action at the 2026 Australian Open, with sixty-four first round qualifying matches spread across the grounds of Melbourne Park.

This is my lucky 13th year covering the Australian Open—my second year for you lovely Bounces readers—and I don’t remember an opening day of qualifying which had quite so many names I wanted to highlight on the order of play.

I spoke to many of the best-known of those 128 names in action on Monday—Sloane Stephens, Bernard Tomic, Taylor Townsend—and you’ll be hearing from each of them here at Bounces soon.

But for the first dispatch from this year’s tournament, I wanted to first bring you a man who already has many firsts to his name, and achieved another by playing here for the first time on Monday.

João Lucas Reis da Silva on Monday at the Australian Open. (Photo by Ben Rothenberg for Bounces)

João Lucas Reis da Silva, a 25-year-old from Recife, Brazil who is No. 206 in the ATP rankings, made his Australian Open debut Monday on Court 16 against Portugal’s Henrique Rocha. Reis lost 6-2, 6-4, but made history as the first openly gay man to ever play this storied 121-year-old Grand Slam tournament.

Readers may recall I mentioned Reis when discussing the lack of gay players in top-flight men’s tennis in a Bounces mailbag a few months ago.

Mailbag: Are There Any Gay Players in the ATP?

Though Reis still has not played in the main draw of a Grand Slam or ATP Tour event, he’s still doing something unprecedented with each new milestone he unlocks—including his first Grand Slam match at last year’s U.S. Open—and so I was eager to talk to him on this trip Down Under.

Though it’s very uncommon for players to do interviews after losing qualifying matches, Reis was nice enough to speak to Bounces at some length after his loss Monday.

Reis discussed the unintentional way a birthday greeting turned into his “coming out announcement,” the impact being an openly gay player may have had on his sharp rise up the rankings, and his thoughts on a second player—Mika Brunold of Switzerland—also coming out.

Plus, of course, he shared his thoughts on the runaway hit gay hockey show Heated Rivalry.

This interview is for paid Bounces subscribers only—your support helps fund the trips like this one to Australia that make my reporting possible. And there will be lots of great stuff here in the next three weeks!