Chris Guccione's confidence is high - and it needs to be.
The giant Victorian is the last Australian male standing at the US Open - entering just the second round - and is about to lead a flagging Davis Cup side to hostile Chile.
With Lleyton Hewitt sidelined due to hip surgery, Guccione suddenly finds himself Australia's leading active male tennis player.
He opened the year's fourth and final grand slam tournament at Flushing Meadows today with a hard-fought 6-3 3-6 7-6 (8-6) 7-6 (8-6) victory over American Jesse Levine.
"I haven't won too many of these grand slam matches so this feels pretty good," said the 201cm lefthander, who did well to ignore the noisy partisan crowd in the intimate surroundings of Court 11.
"It was really about self-belief. I am feeling more and more comfortable in best-of-five set matches and I thought I handled it pretty well today."
He next plays tricky Radek Stepanek, who has been ranked as high as eight.
The Czech is currently ranked 30th, 57 places ahead of the Australian, but Guccione has beaten him before and believes he can do so again.
"I played him twice this year already and it's one-all. He beat me pretty convincingly last time so hopefully I can get a bit of revenge," he said.
"Right now my confidence is pretty high. I've been playing pretty well these last four or five weeks so I'm feeling good.
"I had a really good match against James Blake at the Olympics. I feel like I can keep this roll going."
Guccione shrugged off any suggestion that Hewitt's absence might put any extra pressure on him.
"I don't really think about it," he said.
"If I did it would just be a distraction so there's no point. Once you get on the court you can only do what you're capable of."
Guccione will find himself in a similar position when Australia travel to Antofagasta for a tough Davis Cup World Group play-off against Chile next month, but he said he was ready to lead the team to victory there.
"It's in the back of my mind. It's going to be an interesting tie for us and a tough one because Chile are always difficult to play down there but we'll go in with good spirits and we'll do our best," said Guccione.
"Lleyton's not going to be around forever and we're going to have to learn to deal with that eventually.
"Hopefully he's going to be around for a few more years but who knows?"
On Thursday at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre, Perth teenager Jessica Moore attempts to build on her impressive first round win over Melanie Oudin.
Moore, who turned 18 earlier this month, takes on Germany's Anna-Lena Groenefeld as the only Australian in the women's singles following the surprise first round defeat of the country's No.1 player Casey Dellacqua.
