PARIS — It was a rough afternoon for poetic justice on Court 3 at the French Open on Tuesday.

On one side of the net was Brian Baker, a former junior star from the United States who is now 31 and keeps coming back to the tour for more despite 11 surgeries.

On the other side was Bernard Tomic, a flickering flame from Australia who has earned the nickname Bernard the Tank Engine. He was so ready to get off the court in Madrid last month that he flipped the racket in his hand on match point, putting the grip where the string bed was supposed to be and — no surprise — losing to Fabio Fognini.

“Would you care if you were 23 and worth over $10 million?” Tomic said later, according to Australia’s Gold Coast Bulletin.

Poetic justice would thus have been Baker ripping return winner after return winner and beating Tomic in a five-set mettle detector before delivering a heartfelt TED Talk to Tomic at the net about making the most of your talent right here, right now, because you never know what anvil might fall on your head tomorrow.

None of this happened, unfortunately. Instead, serving big when he needed it most, Tomic ended up a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 winner in the first round on his least favorite surface.

The life lessons (and tennis lessons) presumably will have to come from elsewhere for Tomic, but he should still take a moment to consider just what is driving a thoughtful man like Baker to put himself through this.

“I can only talk about myself,” Baker said afterward when I explained my thesis to him. “You play tennis to play at the ATP level, play at the Slams, and I’ve had a rough go. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of breaks. I’ve lost probably eight years of my career with injury, so every time I play I have to just appreciate being out there and enjoy these moments. Because as a little kid, this is what the dream was: to be able to be a pro and play right here at the Slams.”

A French Open junior finalist in 2003, when he lost to Stan Wawrinka, Baker already came back strong once from years of injuries, reaching the final in Nice and the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2012.

But the feel-good tale came to an abrupt halt at the 2013 Australian Open, where Baker injured his right knee in the second round and left the court in a wheelchair.

Five more surgeries and two extended layoffs followed, during which he did not even touch a racket for months. Yet here he is again, playing with a slight limp and a protected ranking.

“I don’t want to act like woe is me,” Baker said. “It’s not in my character. Maybe for like 10 minutes in a corner by myself, but then I’ll snap out of it. I’ve played tennis since I was 2½ years old. I was given a lot of talent, and unfortunately my body has kind of let me down a little bit along the way, but if I can get a little luck the rest of the year, hopefully it will set me up for a good end of this season and early next.”

Tomic, in his benighted moments, has always seemed much closer to clueless than malicious. It is also important to view him in context: as the son of John Tomic, a domineering father who has rightly earned a reputation as a bully inside the game and who was convicted of causing bodily harm in 2013 in Spain for head-butting Tomic’s hitting partner Thomas Drouet.

To be fair without handing out excuses, sympathy for Bernard Tomic is in order, and his attitude issues on court date to his early years. In 2007, he was reported to Tennis Australia by coaches for a lack of effort in a 6-2, 6-3 loss to Ricardas Berankis in the second round of the French Open junior event.

Tomic was 14 then. He is 23 now, old enough to know much better than to pull the stunt he pulled in Madrid or come up with the flippant $10 million remark.

It was the kind of comment that can stick with a young man deep into adulthood, and on Tuesday I asked him how he felt about it now.

He looked surprised and then sheepish, but he owned it. He also cracked a joke.

“I would love to say I have $10 million U.S., but maybe 10 million Australian,” he said. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that, but that’s in the past. That was my fault. You got me there.”

Is he bothered by his image that he doesn’t care, that he repeatedly doesn’t give his all?

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying,” he said. “I think I have to learn to deal with more and compete. I struggle mentally a lot, so that’s one area I need to improve.”

Tomic certainly competed well on the red clay on Tuesday under the edgy watch of Lleyton Hewitt, the recently retired star who is now Australia’s Davis Cup captain.

Hewitt’s internal flame burned red hot, and he played on well past the days when he was a threat to get back to No. 1. Long after he stopped winning big titles, he never stopped hustling.

A young $10 million man could learn plenty from him. Plenty from Brian Baker, too, even after a straight-sets win at Roland Garros.