AMERICAN college graduate Colton Smith celebrated his 22nd birthday in style with a maiden ATP Tour maindraw win at Indian Wells on day one of the ATP1000 event. Smith stunned Top 40 talent Flavio Cobolli to discard the Italian from a set down to win 3-6 6-2 6-2 in an hour and 53 minutes.

The desert tournament can often bring about some upsets from local hopes and qualifier Smith was just one of those. He rose 49 places in the world (from 261st to 212th) just on his one win alone, though the respective formlines coming into the tournament should have made the match a lot closer on paper.

Smith had won 14 of 15 matches and taken out two Challenger Tours in 2025 already, while Cobolli is currently on a winless streak dating back to October last year. The now 22-year-old won in both Tucson (M01) and then Cleveland (Challenger) beating a couple of handy players along the way including compatriots Ethan Quinn and J.J. Wolf.

In qualifying, the American toppled two seeds in former Top 10 player Fabio Fognini as well as Russian Pavel Kotov to make the main draw, and now will have a huge Round of 64 clash against another United States representative in 31st seed, Alex Michelsen.

In the win over Cobolli, Smith smashed 30 winners – including five aces – compared to Cobolli’s 19, while only committing two more unforced errors (35-33). He won 64 per cent of his first serve points, and converted seven break point chances from nine opportunities, coming from a set down to win 3-6 6-2 6-2 to book his place in the Round of 64.

The Arizona College alumni is bounced back from losing the last three games of the first set to take a 4-1 lead in the second set. Another break in the final game of that set secured it to send the match to a decider, where neither player could seemingly feel comfortable on serve.

After a long hold in the opening game, Smith broke Cobolli in all four of the Italian’s service games, with Cobolli able to do the same for two, but unable to achieve the feat when 4-2 down nor hold his serve when trying to stay in the match.

He was joined in the round of 64 by American wildcard Tristan Boyer who took down Top 100 Australian Aleksandar Vukic in another come-from-behind victory, 4-6 6-2 7-6. Boyer, who turns 24 next month, moved up seven spots in the world to 110th with the victory, hitting 22 winners to 39 unforced errors, but it was minimal compared to Vukic’s 33 and 62 respectively.

The other local hope to win was Marcos Giron, while talented wildcard Nishesh Basavareddy was unable to overcome in-form Chinese talent Yunchaokete Bu, 7-5 6-4. Reilly Opelka bowed out to Russian Roman Safiullin in straight sets, while Aussie Christopher O’Connell and Japanese Grand Slam winner Kei Nishikori were among the other day one winners.