An inspiring tennis player took the court on Sunday in the third round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. Before lacing up his shoes and toting his equipment bag, Taylor Dent had already triumphed in a much larger sense.

Yes, Dent advanced to the round of 16 and set up a meeting with the legendary Roger Federer, but when this poised professional stares at the Swiss superstar later this week, the crowds at the Crandon Park Tennis Center should cheer his name for reasons that have nothing to do with serves or scorelines.

Taylor Dent’s biggest victory in life, you see, was not his 7-5, 6-3 win over Tommy Robredo. Most tennis players would give their right arm to beat Robredo, a former resident of the top 10 and a very solid upper-level performer on tour. Even more players would sacrifice a great deal to have just one main-event encounter with the fabled Federer on the stadium court at a significant tournament. For the casual fan, the ripping of Robredo would seem to be a very big deal in the life of a tennis veteran.

Here, however, is the reason why one match victory, and a fourth-round fistfight with Federer, do not offer Dent cause for supreme celebration: The 27-year-old Californian’s greatest conquest can be found in the form of his refusal to succumb to a severe back injury that threatened to end his promising career.

In August of 2005, Dent reached a career-high ranking of 21. The son of Australian tennis pro Phil Dent (the 1974 Australian Open runner-up to Jimmy Connors) used a booming serve and a high-level net game to become a dangerous floater in any tournament he entered. Taylor’s talent emerged before the watchful eyes of the tennis world when he reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2005. The promise of increased improvement, and even deeper runs at Grand Slam events, gave the young Dent the hope of following the soaring career trajectory attained by his father.

In February of 2006, that glowing goal vanished.

Playing in the Rotterdam (Holland) tour event against Christophe Rochus, Dent’s back gave out. Beyond having to retire from the match, Dent had to face the far more terrifying prospect of the end of his days as a tennis player. The sport offered the possibility of continued employment as a coach or broadcaster, but a man with Dent’s tennis heritage did not want the on-court phase of his tennis life to conclude before its proper time. No competitor wants to walk away from the thrill of battle when the choice is taken out of his hands by larger health considerations.

In the course of the next 27 months, Dent endured three surgeries and–for a small portion of that time–wore a body cast, preventing him from playing a single professional match. When he returned to the painted white lines for a challenger event in late May of 2008, Dent couldn’t have known how his back would respond. He lost that match, and he would lose most of the singles matches he’s played since then.

However, for all of the negative outcomes on the scoreboard, the biggest result of all was that Dent’s back held up throughout his main-draw losses and the numerous qualifying matches he won in order to pull down a paycheck. Dent might have entered Miami with a 3-6 record in main draw matches for 2009, but as far as the Californian was concerned, the ledger still stood in his favor, all because his tennis life had been given back to him by the marvels of medicine and the power of perseverance.

Yes, Taylor Dent has to be thrilled about his advancement at the Sony Ericsson Open. A player who began the year ranked 865th in the world, and who came to Crandon Park rated 467th, is about to shoot up the rankings ladder and boost his career earnings. Far more than those short-term satisfactions, however, a 27-year-old with the heart of a lion has to be relishing the simple fact that he can still compete at a high level, and use his talents the way nature always intended.

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