MELBOURNE, Australia — Ross Hutchins is a cancer survivor, but he does not, he will not, define himself that way. He is not happy just to be here, back on a tennis court, back in a Grand Slam. He appreciates the sympathy, but please, enough.

He is happy, but not any more than normal. He is wiser, but he chalks that up to age. He calls the year he lost to ridding his bloodstream of Hodgkin’s lymphoma “a disruption,” nothing more.

Hutchins, 28, took a vacation a few months ago. He went to the beach. A stranger approached and called him “the cancer boy.” The woman meant it nicely, but it stuck with Hutchins and perhaps bothered him more than he let on. Even though, technically, that is what he was: the cancer boy, his racket shelved, along with the breakthrough 2013 season he expected.

“I’m another tennis player now,” Hutchins said. “I want to be a competitive beast. I want to be ruthless. When you lose a year, you don’t get any younger. You don’t have that long of a tennis life span. It’s not like golf.”