For the first 12 games of his first-ever Grand Slam match at the Australian Open, Joao Fonseca, the hugely talented 18-year-old from Brazil, showed flashes of why he’s seen as the next big thing in men’s tennis. There was some phenomenal hitting off both wings and some solid serves — which he can already hit at 140mph — but it was probably Andrey Rublev, the No. 9 seed, who had enjoyed the better of their first-round match Monday night. Rublev had forced the only break point of the set, in which Fonseca won only six points when returning.
Then the tiebreak began, and Fonseca did what the best players do in the biggest moments: he went supernova. The way the match was going, one point against the serve might well have been enough to win the tiebreak; Fonseca won three.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz now; Novak Djokovic for so much of his career; players like Roger Federer and Pete Sampras before them. Whenever they found themselves in a tiebreak, they found a way to produce their best tennis.
This is precisely what Fonseca did in the first set on Tuesday night, providing compelling evidence for why he is seen as the next challenger to Sinner and Alcaraz’s supremacy. From Rio de Janeiro and ranked No. 112 in the world, Fonseca through qualifying to reach the Australian Open, his maiden major. He ended last year by winning the ATP Next Gen Finals for the best players in the world aged 20 and under, and began this year by winning a Challenger event in Canberra.
The obvious player to compare Fonseca to would be the world No. 1 Sinner, what with his big serve and easy power off both forehand and backhand from the baseline. He’s shy off the court like Sinner too, though more expressive on it. Here’s how he won the seven points that made him…
On the first point of the tiebreak, Fonseca, wearing a white kit with a splash of yellow and pink, spears a return low at Rublev’s feet. The Russian can only lift a backhand up the line that Fonseca smacks away for a crosscourt forehand winner. 1-0.
A well-placed serve out wide forces Rublev to dump his backhand return into the net. 2-0.
The serve plus one, where the serve is followed by a big groundstroke, is one of the most important patterns of play in tennis. Fonseca delivers a textbook example here: big serve to the Rublev backhand to set up a forehand winner up the line. 3-0.
In the fourth point, Fonseca hangs in with some excellent defense and then switches the momentum from defence to attack with one forehand up the line. It’s so deep that Rublev is scampering to return it, and can only hoist a backhand into a central position a few feet inside the court.
In response, Fonseca hits an — don’t try this at home, kids — inside-out backhand. Rublev desperately hits a forehand long and with that Fonseca is two mini-breaks up in a set where he didn’t have a sniff of a break. He gives it the big fist pump; the Brazilian supporters in the crowd go wild. 4-0.
Rublev hits an ace out wide — it’s the only way to win a point against Fonseca at the moment. 4-1.
Big serve out wide, Rublev’s return is wide. 5-1 at the change of ends.
Technically the change of ends should just be the two players walking to the other side of the court. It never is though — there are liquids to be consumed, rackets, clothes and equipment to be fiddled with, superstitions to be upheld. Almost a minute passes before Fonseca throws the ball up to serve again, which is a lot of time when you’re a young man in the biggest match of your career. Plenty of time to wake up and suddenly realise where you are. Or if you’re Fonseca bullet a serve that his opponent can barely get a racket to. 6-1.
Five set points but Fonseca only needs one, dismissively flicking away a Rublev first serve for a return winner on the forehand side. 7-1.
Fonseca rode the momentum of the end of the first set to break Rubev right at the start of the second, which was all he needed to move two sets up. Then, an hour and a half later, Fonseca did it again. He won the third set tiebreak 7-5, sealed with a backhand winner then a forehand winner after some tense moments, to complete a statement 7-6(1), 6-3, 7-6(5) victory. The future is to be decided, but Melbourne witnessed a talent emerge onto the biggest stage.
(Top photo: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Associated Press/Getty Images)
