At just 22 years old, Holger Rune carries the fire of a self-made warrior in tennis, a player who forged his own path where almost no blueprint existed. Denmark, a land not known for churning out tennis champions, has given the sport only a handful of elite figures, with Caroline Wozniacki being the most prominent anomaly. And yet here stands Rune, already ranked No. 11 in the world, walking into the cauldron of the US Open as one of the faces tipped to lift the crown.

His story begins where no federation held his hand and no national system cleared his way. “We had to do it by ourselves. We didn’t have a federation that took cause for you or anything like that,” Rune said two years ago, his voice carrying the defiance of a man who knows the depth of his own scars. Those wor

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