The 24-year-old, fresh from a nine-month break that he thought would probably be permanent, confirms it with a smile: "I'm back, for sure. I'm back." He will travel, he will start over. Wants to play tennis again, having previously not even wanted to touch a racquet. At No.631, the youngest-ranked Australian Open qualifier in at least eight years had just taken world No.99 Yoshihito Nishioka to four sets on his grand slam singles debut on a sweltering Melbourne day.

"Two weeks ago, I wasn't even expecting that I'd be playing the Australian Open, and then managing to qualify for my home grand slam it's just been an unbelievable past week," Bolt said. "What I can take away is that my level of tennis isn't too far away from the guys that are in the top 100, so that gives me a lot of confidence for my future."

Bolt's is one of the tournament's more interesting back-stories. A talented junior, one-time Davis Cup orange boy and left-handed contemporary of Bernard Tomic, Bolt quit tennis last March to stay home and erect fences. "Construction", let's call it.

The rebuild of his tennis career, too, has spiked early on. From a second round appearance as a qualifier at the Happy Valley Challenger in the first week of January, he was granted the last wildcard into Open qualifying, where he beat a trio of higher-ranked opponents including former top-30 Frenchman Julien Benneteau to earn a major draw singles debut at the age of 24.

Bolt had struggled with an elbow injury, as well as the travel and just the general tennis grind, and it took a few months before he started to miss what he had left behind. Like Sam Groth before him, body and mind had to be in the same – right – place.

"Probably half-way through I first started missing playing tennis, and then, yes, as it went on, my feelings for it just got stronger and stronger and then I just had to come back," he said.

"I don't know if there was a specific time. My coach Todd Langman gave me a call. I think he wanted me to help out coaching and I was like 'yeah, I can do that', and then I was like 'well, I'm thinking about coming back into tennis' so was just like 'yeah great, come out, have a hit whenever you want', so that's pretty much how it all started rolling."

On Tuesday, the foundations were laid against Nishioka, the Japanese retriever who is one of the youngest men in the top 100, despite having reached the second round of a grand slam only once in six previous attempts. The match was on Bolt's racquet, but he could not stretch it to a fifth set.

His goals have not been readjusted, for his ranking is still not where he needs it to be to play the tournaments he would like to. "I guess that's what you've gotta do when you've had some time out, you've just got to grind your way back up."

A pre-match comparison had been made with Wimbledon cult figure Marcus Willis, who last year became the lowest-ranked qualifier - at No.772 - to win a match at a major since 1988. Willis, famously, went on to play, and lose to, the great Roger Federer on the world's most famous court. Bolt's tale ended differently, but there is still doubles to come for the 2014 quarter-finalist. And more. That's the plan.

* Queensland wildcard Lizette Cabrera could not emulate the day one breakthrough of fellow junior Jaimee Fourlis, but was competitive with Croatian Donna Vekic for 84-punishing minutes in the heat on court 13 before losing 7-5, 6-2 on her slam debut. Fellow wildcard Arina Rodionova was eliminated 6-1, 6-2 by 17th seed Caroline Wozniacki.