It won’t just be footy on the agenda over the next fortnight at the Vermont Eagles.

Wimbledon – the highlight of the tennis calendar – and the progress of Sam Groth is sure to be a hot topic of conversation.

Vermont, a powerhouse local Australian Rules football club in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, was where Groth turned in 2011 after walking away from tennis.

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Shoulder surgery and a failed marriage to fellow tennis professional Jarmila Gajdosova saw Groth pull on the boots for Vermont’s reserves and ponder if tennis was for him.

Four years later, it is a question that can only be met with an unequivocal ‘yes’.

Groth returned to tennis in late 2011, finishing the year ranked 575th in the world. That’s a long way away from Wimbledon.

But determined to leave no stone unturned in his ‘second chance’, Groth got himself much fitter and steadily climbed the rankings, moving inside the top 100 in 2014, which was highlighted by a clash against Roger Federer on centre court at the US Open.

And his rise has not stopped, with a third-round appearance at the Australian Open providing the perfect launching pad for a big 2015.

The 27-year-old has won two ITF Challenger events this year, in Taipei and Manchester, reached a career-high ranking of 66th – he now sits 69th – and earlier this month, beat a top-20 player (Spain’s Feliciano Lopez, then ranked 14th, now 16th) for the first time in his career.

With the fastest-ever recorded serve in professional tennis – a 263 km/h missile at a Challenger event in South Korea in 2012 – and in the best form of his life, it is little wonder Groth is quietly confident ahead of a tournament played on his favourite grass-court surface.

“I’m feeling good. It’s the first time I’ve had direct entry into the main draw of the singles at Wimbledon,” Groth, who begins his campaign against 31st seed American Jack Sock on Tuesday, told The New Daily.

“Not having to play qualifiers was nice. I’ve had a pretty good lead-up and am coming in with a lot of good wins.

“I get a different level of confidence when playing on grass. It’s definitely something I grew up on and I’m comfortable every time I step out there.

“Any time I get a chance to get on a court that is a little bit quicker, it helps. They have slowed the court down a lot at Wimbledon over the past few years and you’ve seen a lot more guys play off the baseline.

“But the court does still help compared to the speeds of the other courts on tour. The grass definitely suits my game style a lot more.”

Groth, ninth in this year’s ATP ‘ace tally’, acknowledges his career has been a slow burn.

And he said there was no secret to his sharp rise over the past two years other than hard work and the help of his coach, Ben Mathias.

“The last few years, I’ve slowly been improving, slowly working my way up,” he said. “Now I’m finally starting to make some inroads and finally starting to get better.

“I’m not one of these young, superstar talents that broke through and everything came fairly easy. I’ve had to work quite hard.

“But now I feel I have a chance against some of those top guys. At the start of the year, I just lost to [Canadian Milos] Raonic and that was only the second guy I had played in the top 10.

“Now I’m starting to play these guys more consistently and I feel like I’m starting to maybe trouble them a bit more.”

Last year was Groth’s first in the main singles draw at Wimbledon and he feels nerves got the better of him.

The Narrandera-born man was far from disgraced in a 7-5 7-6 (7-2) 7-6 (7-5) first-round loss to 19th seed Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine.

The match, like many in Groth’s career, was decided by tiebreaks – commonplace because he is so tough to break when serving.

“Ideally, it’d be nice not to have to play tiebreaks,” he said.

“But the way I play, I’m going to play quite a few. I’ve won a bunch lately. I lost one against [Viktor] Troicki and I lost one in Nottingham but other than that, I’ve won a lot of them lately.

“Last year, I was a bit nervous. In 2013, I played doubles at Wimbledon but I’d never played singles there. I was a bit uptight and didn’t play that well.

“But I think now, when I step in there, I feel like I should be there. That gives me confidence and makes me feel a little bit easier.

“And there’s the fact that I competed against a guy who is not just a very good player [Dolgopolov], but a very good grass-courter as well.

“It just shows that I don’t have to do super-special things to be able to compete with these guys and that if I keep a level head, I have got a good chance to win.”

Groth, a member of Australia’s Davis Cup team, will start as the outsider against Sock. But as he says, he’s a good chance of victory.

And who would have thought that was likely in 2011?