AI hasn’t taken over tennis. Be thankful for that. It will probably try to strangle the world of sport at some stage, but while the best live unscripted drama is still pure, let’s enjoy it.

Yet for a week, you could have sworn it had crept its way into the Perpetual NSW Open: careening along the baseline of the electric blue courts, whacking groundstrokes off each wing, sending down aces for fun, sending opponents around the bend, sending them to the airport.

Not even AI could have been as automatic as James Duckworth, the popular journeyman’s popular journeyman. He won the coveted event by virtue of not dropping a set all week, but not even a service game. A service game!  

“I’ve served alright this week,” he shrugs.

You think!

Yet in the moments after he sealed another ATP Challenger title, the game was finally up. After a week of silent fist pumps and loud groundstrokes, Duckworth cracked.

As his plucky rival Hayata Matsuoka – the most overworked man on site all week after wading through two matches of qualifying and then making it all the way to final against the top seed – sent championship point out, the emotion spilled out of Duckworth. He flung the racquet to the ground, ripped off his hat, reached out for his support crew. He even returned the court for his own curtain call. No one was really demanding it, but they were happy they got it.

It couldn’t have been AI. AI doesn’t express emotion like that.

“It means a lot,” Duckworth said after toppling Matsuoka 6-1, 6-4 in just 70 minutes on Sunday. “I love playing in front of family and friends and to win this tournament is just really special. It’s an awesome feeling, especially here in Sydney where I grew up and spent so much time at this facility. I first came here when I was eight years old.”

For those wondering, that is probably about the time the Olympic Games were sending Sydney to the world. Matsuoka wasn’t even born when Athens was host city four years later.

Duckworth has never been one for convention, and at 33, he’s defying Father Time for a long as he can. The NSW Open honour board he walked past every day inside the facility has names, from the last quarter of a century alone, like Lleyton Hewitt, Juan Martin del Potro, Alex de Minaur. It has also been won by Roger Federer. History is not made overnight, and this event has It dripping from the walls. Duckworth is old enough to know what it’s like to have played Federer when the Swiss great was in his pomp, a dream for pretty much all of his rivals this week.

While others preach reach and look like stringbeans, Duckworth is still built like an NRL second-rower. His core is like concrete, shoulders sculpted. Despite growing up in Sydney, he chose to support his beloved Newcastle Knights when he was a kid. Why? Because his dad followed Manly, and Newcastle have always despised Manly. Just different.

It would have been different to cheer for Matsuoka among a partisan crowd, but the Japanese 20-year-old had already taken out pretty much every other Aussie in the field this week: Bernard Tomic, Cruz Hewitt, Tai Sach, James McCabe. Slugging it out with Duckworth is different, though.

“Two weeks ago, I was ATP 600 and now I’m ATP 400,” Matsuoka beamed in English during his presentation speech.

Everyone, seemingly, was a winner.

“Last week he played six matches, this week seven,” Duckworth acknowledged. “That’s a lot of tennis and he’s beaten quality opposition. He’s a great tennis player, only young at 20 years old so he’s got a good future ahead.”

Duckworth’s future might include a berth in the main draw of the Australian Open, with the leading player from the three-week swing at Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide receiving a wildcard into the happy slam. Duckworth is right in the mix.

It would be nothing less than he deserves.

No tennis career is ever linear, and certainly not that of Duckworth, who was once ranked inside the world’s top 50. He tried to spice things up a few months ago and installed a new coaching set-up. He joked his new team must have been asking: what have we got ourselves into? He lost four straight matches after the US Open, but back at home, he’s back to being automatic.

“I just worked quite a bit on the mental side, my concentration and being able to stay in a match for long periods of time,” he says. “I’m slowly getting better than that.”

That might come with being a little older, a little wiser, and fighting against the fading light. It’s something not even AI can teach. The only thing automatic about Duckworth has been his performance all week.

Boy, it’s been enjoyable to watch.