HOUSTON — Tyler Ivey is at peace, but sometimes ponders his past as a passionless pitcher who still reached the pinnacle. Adrenaline aided Ivey through his major-league debut in his hometown, the sort of storybook tale only this sport seems to write.

On the day it unfolded, Ivey weighed 180 pounds and could not feel his fingers. Burnout and a barking elbow badgered him before and throughout the game at Globe Life Field on May 21, 2021. Ivey could not spin the baseball but still managed to survive into the fifth inning. After manager Dusty Baker pulled him, Ivey exited the mound with a wide grin.

For many, it is their final image of a man who disappeared. Houston demoted Ivey to Triple A following the game, but he didn’t report within the requisite three days. He doubted whether he wanted to continue playing. Doctors diagnosed Ivey with thoracic outlet syndrome, finally solving his physical problems. The mental obstacles remained.

“One thing you can’t fake is passion,” Ivey said last month. “And I just don’t think I had the drive and the passion at that point to give my all or give my best to be at the top of the game and compete at that level. Even if I wanted to have it, it just wasn’t there at the time.”

So, 12 months after making his major-league debut, Ivey left the sport. He became a salesman, first of life insurance and, for a short time, solar panels. He married a longtime friend named Audrey, welcomed a son named James and made his family’s home in a tiny Texas town called Pottsboro.

“I just wanted to go have a simple life, spend time with my friends and family and see how God’s plan worked out for me,” Ivey said.

Ivey presumed it would not include baseball. After he retired, he swore off watching the sport, save the Astros’ annual playoff run. Once regarded as one of Houston’s premier starting pitching prospects, Ivey seemed content never to step on a mound again.

Now, it is his ultimate goal. Two years after he walked away, Ivey is attempting a baseball comeback. A slew of serendipitous encounters have allowed him to see the sport from a different perspective. An impromptu start for a collegiate summer league team helped Ivey, 28, to reignite his passion.

“There were some synchronicities that happened,” Ivey said. “And everything I did, everywhere we went, all roads led back to baseball.”

Ivey decided to quit during the first week of May 2022. His parents, Jon and Michelle, visited him throughout the week in Sugar Land after Ivey informed them it “may be the last time” they could watch him pitch.

That Sunday, on Mother’s Day, Ivey threw 59 pitches across 2 1/3 innings in his final professional appearance. After the game, he entered Triple-A manager Mickey Storey’s office and had what Ivey described as a “great conversation.” According to Ivey, he and the organization “left on really good terms.”

“They understood. There was no animosity on either side,” said Ivey, Houston’s third-round draft pick in 2017. “I still got tons of love and respect for them. They gave me a shot.”

No single reason exists for Ivey’s decision. He pitched through elbow pain for most of the 2020 and 2021 seasons, but hid it from the team for fear of losing his place within its hierarchy. Days after making his major-league debut, Ivey was further staggered by a family tragedy. The stresses of playing during a pandemic took a toll, as did strain from his decision not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Trouble sleeping and eating left Ivey a shell of the person who entered professional ball. He weighs 205 pounds now — 25 pounds heavier than when he debuted in Arlington.

Ivey made eight appearances spanning 18 2/3 innings after that start against the Rangers, including five in Triple A at the beginning of the 2022 season. To hear him describe it, no single inflection point precipitated his decision, nor did one particular aspect of his predicament outweigh the other.  An accumulation of it all became too much for Ivey to bear — and most around him knew it.

Three days after Ivey retired, an unexpected phone call interrupted a day at the gym. Ivey dropped everything to answer when he saw Baker’s name on the caller ID.

“We know you need a break. We get it,” Ivey recalled Baker telling him. “But the body, sometimes it needs some rest and sometimes it miraculously heals itself. And if that were to happen, you never know, a few years from now, you might get a call. At least consider it.”

“Absolutely,” Ivey answered. “Anything for you.”

Last summer, Ivey volunteered to help one of his neighbors coach a high school summer ball team, even though his original inclination was to decline.

“It allowed me to see baseball from, I guess, a different light, a different point of view,” he said, “which started to make me fall in love with it again.”

That love proved strong enough for Ivey to double down on coaching. The Sherman Shadowcats are a Texas-based collegiate summer league team within the Mid America League. When they found themselves in need of a pitching coach, they offered the job to Ivey. The life insurance salesman accepted the chance to coach in his spare time.

But when attrition hit in late July, it left the team without enough pitchers to get through an upcoming game. The head coach asked Ivey if he would start it.

“I basically rolled out of bed. I’d played catch a few times, just screwing around. I hadn’t been training. Hadn’t been intently throwing, nothing,” Ivey said. “I just said, ‘Screw it, I’ll hop on the mound and we’ll see how it goes.’”

Ivey struck out all three hitters he saw. He threw without pain and, for once, could feel his fingers, fulfilling Baker’s prophecy. Radar guns had Ivey’s fastball in the low 90s, up from the 88-90 mph he averaged at the end of his professional career.

“It felt good to go back out there and compete and know that, ‘Hey, I can still throw strikes. My stuff is still good.’”

Ivey soon wondered how good. The reintroduction to competition, however brief it was, helped to crystallize a path that began to feel more realistic.

“I started throwing and thinking about it. And I just thought, ‘All right, I’m going to do this,’” Ivey said.

“We prayed on it a lot. My wife would pray for me and she would ask God to kind of help me find my direction. What’s my purpose? Everything just went back to baseball.”

Ivey knows he can pitch. That feel for the game hasn’t left him. Trying to do it without velocity or feel for any of his secondary pitches sunk his first professional stint, even as he ascended the Astros’ organizational hierarchy.

“If I come back and my stuff is better and I’m the same pitcher — which I do believe I can still pitch,” Ivey said. “And now stuff is better and I’m healthy, who knows what could happen?”

Ivey has not been on a radar gun since his substitute summer league start. He is studying both biomechanics and the art of pitching instead of relying on nothing but natural arm talent. Ivey’s initial findings leave him amazed at what he accomplished — and angry he didn’t discover it sooner.

“My throwing mechanics, in general, were just so bad. It’s a miracle that my arm didn’t blow off,” Ivey said.

Tyler Ivey has the most unorthodox delivery in camp. More on how he got it, why it works and why the Astros don’t want to tinker with it – https://t.co/L59T7l1ReL pic.twitter.com/jbG0ESpj5D

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 11, 2021

“I just had no idea. I was just kind of relying on my arm, relying on my natural talent to get it done. That can only last for so long until it all blows up in your face.”

During his first professional stint, Ivey had an unconventional delivery, complete with a high leg kick and violent rotation. He’s modified it to be “much more efficient and smooth” after making “significant changes” to his body and posture.

“After throwing bullpens and throwing with 100 percent intensity, my elbow doesn’t even get sore, let alone hurt, which is pretty remarkable,” Ivey said.

Ivey hasn’t changed his five-pitch arsenal, but does believe all of his offerings have benefitted from his body’s overhaul. His curveball is sharper with more downward action. His changeup added some depth. His fastball remains hoppy with some backspin — traits Houston’s pitching infrastructure covets.

The Astros, the organization that once thought enough of Ivey to make him a major leaguer at 25, still retain his contractual rights. Whether they invite Ivey to minor-league spring training in March or release him remains an open question.  But even if they offered him another chance, it’s possible that too much time has passed.  Ivey isn’t sure of the outcome, but said he will nevertheless remain an Astros fan.

Ivey harbors some regret for how he handled the demotion after his major-league debut, but otherwise is content with the first chapter of his career.

How the next unfolds is Ivey’s foremost focus.

“We’re really happy living the nice, simple little life we’ve created,” Ivey said. “But we both feel that God’s put it on our hearts that I’m on a mission and I’m going to go do it, whatever that looks like. And if it doesn’t work out well, I’m completely fine with that. I’ll just go back home and be happy again with my family.

“But I do believe that there’s unfinished business out there. I’d like to go see what that looks like.”

(Photo: Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)

MELBOURNE, Australia — Here on the island that was once the center of the men’s tennis world — the land of Laver and Rosewall, Emerson and Newcombe and other gods of the game — the strangest of dynamics has emerged.

The rest of the globe obsesses about Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Down here, it’s all about their own tennis yin and yang.

One is a top-10 player who will do whatever he can to avoid controversy, while dedicating every ounce of his energy to the sport. The other is an unranked unicorn, most at home in the middle ring of a three-ring circus. One has ground his way to the edge of the sport’s elite. The other, according to just about every other player and some big names of the past including Goran Ivanisevic and Andy Roddick, has more natural tennis gifts flowing through his veins than anyone on Earth.

The 2025 Australian Open is abuzz with the latest doings of both.

Alex de Minaur, the world No. 8, and Nick Kyrgios, who is back after a two-year battle with knee and wrist injuries, are the headliners for their country at Melbourne Park. Kyrgios emceed the night session on John Cain Arena Monday, before De Minaur headlines Rod Laver Arena, the pantheon of Australian tennis Tuesday night.

They are both celebrities of the moment; they could not be less alike.

Kyrgios has returned to the center of the tennis world as only he can, toting his confidence like a broadsword and swinging it in the direction of anyone he encounters, whether they want to duel or not. He doesn’t even have a ranking after so long out through injury.

Yet although he is at the bottom of the pecking order among his countrymen when it comes to numbers, there is no doubting who fills stadiums. He’s spent much of the past months trolling Sinner, the world No. 1, about his doping case, plastering lurid allegations about conspiracy on social media and filling comments sections with needle emojis. That included posting them in the comments of a fellow Aussie, and son of Lleyton Hewitt, Cruz, who put a photo up of him and Sinner which likely represented the best moment of his tennis life.

Sinner is none too pleased about this, if indirectly. “I don’t think I have to answer this,” he bristled when Kyrgios’ jabs came up in a news conference Friday.

For Kyrgios, wildly talented but always ambivalent about life as a tennis professional — and always willing to turn matches into spectacles with rants at umpires, officials and those seated in his own player box, and taunts towards opponents — it was business as usual.

He has sought more nuance in other areas of his life. In early 2023, Kyrgios pleaded guilty to assaulting his then girlfriend Chiara Passari in 2021, but was not convicted. He has been open about living through depression, and has said that his mental health contributed to his behavior.

“We watch sport because we want personalities,” Kyrgios said Friday. “Every time I step out on court, I don’t know if I’m going to be super-controversial in a good or bad way. Throughout my career, it hasn’t always been good, but it’s added a lot of excitement to the game. I think it’s important.

“There’s so many good players on the tour now. I think there’s not so many contrasting personalities.”

How big a star is Kyrgios around here? He lost his first-round singles match to Jacob Fearnley of Great Britain (like Andy Murray, a Scot) Monday night in straight sets. He was carrying an injury throughout, which made much of the action provisional — and for him, coming back from 18 months out, it may well have been a warm-up act.

He will want to pack stadiums for the doubles, which he will play with his close friend Thanasi Kokkinakis. The duo — known as the “Special Ks” — won the title here in 2022, a run that played to raucous, beered-up crowds that turned the doubles competition into a national happening.

In his post-match news conference after being beaten by Fearnley, Kyrgios made a stronger admission: “I don’t see myself playing singles here again.”

His contrast with de Minaur could not be more stark. Kyrgios is 6 feet 4 inches (193cm) tall, a master of trick shots and creativity with one of the best serves in the world. De Minaur is a good half-foot shorter, and given how slight he is, he presents smaller than that.

Always envied for his unmatched speed, de Minaur spent the first post-pandemic years lurking in the world top 20. He carried the hopes of his country into a fourth-round match against Novak Djokovic here in 2023. Djokovic said he used the moment to take some revenge on Australia for deporting him the previous year, over his refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19. He annihilated its favorite tennis son, 6-2, 6-1, 6-2.

Then, last May, de Minaur’s career arc veered upwards.

He is half-Spanish and spent much of his childhood there, but has never had much use for clay-court tennis events. He can run like a deer; he can switch directions like a scrambling puppy dog; he has a massive engine. He is ideally suited to the physical, intense game that the surface demands, and he has never relied on a big serve that a clay court might neutralize for his success.

He beat Daniil Medvedev — who hates clay — to make the 2024 French Open quarterfinals in a miasma of rain and cloud, screaming to his friends and coaches, “I love the clay. I love it here. I can’t get enough.”

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He got a slew of ‘I told you sos’ from those coaches. Then he made the quarterfinals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, forced out of the former by a cruel stroke of bad luck when he got injured at the end of his fourth-round win. Balky hip and all, he battled his way into the year-end finals, entering the elite company of the top eight.

He was already a massive star in Australia. Beyond his homeland, he was best known as a star boyfriend, the guy who caught the next flight out of Acapulco, Mexico after winning the ATP event there last March to see his partner, English top-30 WTA player Katie Boulter, play her own final the next night in San Diego, California. The effort set the bar for all boyfriends, sports and otherwise, and crossed over from sports coverage into the television morning shows. He proposed to Boulter during the off-season. She said yes.

At the French Open last May, on a walk through the corridors underneath Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros, he explained that he wanted to evolve from a grinder into someone with the extra oomph to hit the ball through the court occasionally. Maybe even get some easy points on serve. He was too easy to push around.

“I would get exposed and kind of bullied a little bit,” he said.

Alex de Minaur has risen to the top eight in the world in the past 12 months (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

When de Minaur arrived on the ATP Tour six years ago, he was a little more than 150 pounds (68kg) dripping wet. He’s now up to about 167lb after some gym work, and during the past year, his weight and strength hit a tipping point. Finally, he could push the best players in the world back onto their heels with a combination of newfound power and more revs on his groundstrokes.

“It’s always been about getting stronger, putting a little bit more weight on me,” he said. “My weight of ball is also a little bit bigger and ultimately that’s what I needed to compete against the top players in the world.”

He couldn’t win a match at those end-of-year finals. Still, he believed he had arrived.

“I’ve crossed a big barrier in my career, and now it’s about making use of my position,” de Minaur said.

Kyrgios doesn’t disagree. In his news conference Friday, he recalled the first time he hit with de Minaur, when the latter was a teenager tagging along to a Davis Cup tie as a training partner. Kyrgios decided to play some balls with him late one day. He brought a beer to the court, thinking it wouldn’t be too serious.

“I was like, ‘I’ll go out there and teach this little kid a lesson’. (But) It was a really close set. I was in my prime. He was only 17,” he said. “To see how well he’s taken it upon himself to be our No. 1 player for the last three, four years — he’s grown.

“ I was there. I didn’t always deal with it the best.”

No, he did not. Can he do it now? Can he again be the player that reached a Wimbledon final?

Kyrgios will never approach a match with much humility. He has said his sport requires a certain amount of delusion.

“If I’m playing my style of tennis, my unpredictability, I have a chance against anyone. That’s the mindset you need to have,” he said Friday. “If I walked out on the court for the first time against Nadal, Djokovic, Federer, and was realistic, I probably wouldn’t have won. A kid from Canberra going out there, and beating them… You can’t be realistic. You have to think, ‘I’m the best tennis player in the world.’ Is that realistic? Probably not. But I think that when I’m out there.”

Here lies perhaps the lone similarity between the two, even if de Minaur expresses the sentiment somewhat differently. He has said that with passing each Australian Open, he’s arrived as a better version of himself. He’s learned plenty. Winning has bred confidence.

“If it was strictly based on rankings, it would be quite a boring sport, but anything can happen at this stage,” he said. “We’ve seen opportunities arise, lots of doors opening up.

“There’s always a chance. Every time you step out for a tournament, you always got to think that there’s a chance.”

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Will Tullos)