Alex de Minaur has been left relieved to blast back from being a set down and avoid joining the legion of seeds who've already been scattered at this shock-laden Wimbledon.
In perfect sunny conditions on Thursday (Friday AEST), Australia's big hope brushed off a woeful first set against French qualifier Arthur Cazaux before regrouping, asserting his superiority and eventually prevailing 4-6 6-2 6-4 6-0 to ease into the third round again.
Fifteen of the 32 men's seeds had already fallen in the first two rounds and there were early concerns for de Minaur after a woeful first set in which he made 14 unforced errors.
"It just shows you, this sport, it's not easy out there. Anything can happen on any given day," sighed de Minaur, after being asked about the proliferation of big names going out early.
And though a victory featuring 31 unforced mistakes suggested plenty of work to be done still, the most important thing was that he was not among them and didn't suffer the same second-round misstep of Roland Garros.
"Over the last couple of weeks, my mentality is about taking small wins. Probably the old me would be, like, 'I'm definitely not happy with the way I started this match. It's not good enough. I need to lift my game'," he pondered.
"But the way I'm looking at it is that I'm happy. I reset. I found my game. I battled through. There were some tough moments there which I pushed through."
De Minaur had never been knocked out of a grand slam by anyone as lowly-ranked as No.115 Cazaux but the alarm bells were ringing once the fluid server from Montpellier took advantage of de Minaur's early lapses on a packed No.2 Court.
But urged on at courtside by his Davis Cup captain and last Australian men's Wimbledon winner Lleyton Hewitt, de Minaur stirred, nearly doubled his first-serve percentage of 33 percent to 63 percent and swept to level the set scores.
Cazaux, who'd knocked out de Minaur's old colleague from his Sydney junior days, Adam Walton, in five sets in the opening round, had banged down one serve timed at 147mph (236.5km) in that win.
The big delivery got him out of trouble constantly as 'Demon' put the pressure on and earned six break points during the second set, finally earning the key break at 4-4 when the Frenchman threw in a double fault.
Serving for it, de Minaur sealed the stanza with a thrilling inside-out forehand tracer, before delivering an uncharacteristic fist-pumping roar towards the crowd, who were largely rooting for the fiance of British player Katie Boulter.
Cazaux's spirit was broken after the second set as de Minaur felt freed up to demonstrate why he's determined to surpass his quarter-final berth in last year's event, feeding the dispirited Frenchman a 41-minute 'bagel' set and progressing to the last-32 in two hours 48 minutes.
In the third round, de Minaur will be up against either Czech 21st seed Tomas Machac or Danish qualifier August Holmgren, who were in action later on Thursday.
Earlier, Australia's Olympic men's doubles champions, the 15th seeds John Peers and Matt Ebden, bowed out in the opening round, losing 6-3 6-4 to Czech pair Petr Nouza and Patrik Rikl.