Junior Tennis Champions Center (College Park, Md)

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    How to Recognize a Tennis Prodigy

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    The people who coached Frances Tiafoe as a child said they could see even then that he would become one of the world’s top players. But how did they know?You may have seen it if you’re a tennis fan. The ad begins with a young boy of 10 or 11, sitting in a humble apartment watching Venus Williams on a tiny antique television. He’s interrupted by a man tapping him on his shoulder.“Hey Frances,” the man says, “What if a wall isn’t an obstacle, but an opportunity?”The apartment melts away and now the boy and the man — presumably a coach — joyfully hit beautiful looping groundstrokes against a wall. As they hit, the sweet-faced boy grows gradually older, finally melding into a regal, heavily muscled adult, his head crowned by a now-familiar headband as he delivers a sizzling ace and the crowd roars. It is Frances Tiafoe, one of the most popular and recognizable faces in men’s tennis, now ranked 10th in the world and considered a contender in the U.S. Open, which begins Monday.Of course the young Tiafoes in the ad were the product of a casting call, not the actual young Frances. But the producers did a good job finding someone who looked like the 11-year-old boy I met in 2009, when I spent a couple of months writing about the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., a then-obscure tennis training academy which had shockingly produced three boys in the world’s top 20 of junior tennis. I eventually accompanied their top two players, Denis Kudla and Mitchell Frank, to the French Open, where they competed in the junior championships.But here’s the relevant bit: During my reporting at the tennis center, I spent a day with a boy the coaches seemed to have a strange regard for. Kudla might actually make it to the pro tour, they said, adding: “But this kid is going to be better. This kid is special.”I was baffled. He appeared to be an ordinary 11-year-old, a ringer for the first kid in the ad — except instead of stylish new tennis duds he was wearing a well-worn Pikachu T-shirt. Frances was not especially big for his age, with no notable force of personality I could detect except an open and appealing disposition. I spent a morning in an attic above the tennis courts with him while he suffered through a geography class that was part of the in-house academic program. He wasn’t sullen, as so many kids would be, forced to focus on latitude and longitude with a strange adult looking over his shoulder. It was more a mild bemusement: “How did I end up here when I could be playing tennis?”Tiafoe being trained by Pat Etcheberry, a strength and conditioning coach, in 2012.Matt Roth for The New York TimesAfter class I hit with him. He was really good for his age. But I noticed that after he hit the ball, he didn’t immediately bounce back into position for the next shot — a trademark of a serious player. And when I watched him play in a local tournament in a dingy sports bubble, he beat an older kid, but only by moon-balling him to death. I couldn’t see why the coaching staff was so high on him.A year later, I returned to the tennis center, and Frances, now 12, had replaced the moon ball with fearsome topspin groundstrokes that shot off the court and smacked into the back fence with a thud. When he was 15 — just four years after he left me so unimpressed — Tiafoe became the youngest player to win the Orange Bowl, the world’s premier 18-and-under tournament, which had previously crowned Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Jim Courier, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.When I delved into what it was, exactly, that the College Park pros had seen in Frances that I had missed, I discovered I had some expert company in my oversight.Kudla left College Park when he was 18 and became the first Junior Tennis Champions Center alumnus to break into the top 100 in men’s tennis, peaking in 2016 at No. 53 in the world. He knew better than most what combination of skill, dedication and gut-busting work that took.Early in his pro career, Kudla returned to the tennis center for a visit, a conquering hero. Frances was 13, still a few years away from winning his first junior titles. When he saw Frances play, he was more than a little skeptical. “He had that weird technique, weird forehand, I didn’t think his tennis I.Q. was that high,” Kudla said.He hit with Tiafoe and had the same sense of his potential that I did.“I just never thought that he had the discipline to be top 100 — not from a fitness point of view, but from a decision-making point of view,” Kudla said. “Decisions on the court are so important and take so much work, so much instruction, so much studying. I didn’t see him doing that.“But I was also basing that on the way I did it. I’m definitely more of an overthinker than he is. He’s a lot more natural, a lot more creative, a lot more God-given with his hands, so I was wrong about that as well. I was definitely wrong about a lot of things with him.”Tiafoe playing in Indian Wells, Calif., in 2016, the year he turned pro. Julian Finney/Getty ImagesTiafoe turned pro in 2016 and quickly became a fan favorite. He had an infectious gaptoothed grin and a moving back story: The impoverished son of refugees from the civil war in Sierra Leone, he had grown up in the tennis center, where his father was a janitor, sometimes sleeping on a massage table head to toe with his twin brother, Franklin, when his dad worked late. He also had a performative flair and winning disposition to go with his killer forehand. He was an enthusiastic and indiscriminate hugger at the postgame handshake who obviously loved being on the court and drove the crowd into a frenzy with gutsy shotmaking, fist pumps and biceps flexes.He rose to the top 100 at 19, broke the top 50 at 20, and at 21 broached the top 30. No longer the shy little boy, he was 6 feet 2 inches and built like a linebacker, with 135 m.p.h. serves and forehands not much slower. Even then, Kudla remained skeptical that Tiafoe had what it took to make the top 10, and from 2019 to 2021 Tiafoe seemed to feed those doubts. He had a propensity to get ahead in matches and then lose focus. He lost too often to lower-ranked opponents in the first round of too many tournaments.During this period I suggested to the tennis center chief executive, Ray Benton, that Tiafoe’s career might have peaked at age 21. No shame in that, I said. Getting into the top 30 of the brutally competitive pro tour is almost a miracle to begin with. There are about 1,800 professional players in the ranking system, but only roughly the top 100 can make much of a living from competitive play alone. Benton himself had once told me: “There are 11 Americans in the top 100. That basically means there are 11 jobs in the whole world of tennis for Americans. How bad are your odds there?”Maybe, I suggested, Frances had finally found his limit at a very rarefied altitude.Benton just smiled and said, “Nope.”Really? I asked. Just how high did he think Frances could go?“All the way to the top,” he said. “No. 1.”What about that kid Carlos Alcaraz? I said. He looks like he will be eating everyone else’s lunch for a couple decades. And who knows if Novak Djokovic’s deal with the devil has an expiration date.Benton shrugged. “OK, then, top 10, at least.”As if on cue last summer, Tiafoe began to hang on in matches in which he had jumped to a lead. He would switch into a higher gear and finish, against even some top 10 opponents. He made a thrilling, stadium-shaking run to the U.S. Open semifinals, barely losing to Alcaraz. Along with Taylor Fritz, he is one of two American men in the top 10 for the first time in more than a decade.Tiafoe at the U.S. Open last year. “I haven’t seen anyone in my 35 years in tennis whose love of the game was so pure,” the coach Vesa Ponkka said of young Tiafoe.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWhich left me where I began — mystified. How did Benton know then? And how did his coaches know at the beginning?At the tennis center in 2009, I watched as Vesa Ponkka, the director of tennis, and the coach Frank Salazar ran a horde of local children through drills cleverly disguised as games in a “Free Fun Festival” at the academy. Some kids twirled like ballerinas or flapped their arms like birds when instructed to run a route among orange cones. But one girl cut and bobbed through the obstacles like a cornerback. “Frank, check this out,” Ponkka told Salazar. “See how she pumps her knees high, her arms move in sync, her head stays still?”Ponkka knew that kind of balance, focus and poise in a young child was the best indication of future athletic success — she could maybe play on her high school team someday, or even at college. But what did he see in the young Frances that far exceeded anything he saw in that girl, or anyone else who ever stepped onto those College Park hardcourts?“We all noticed that the moment he came in here at 4 or 5 he just couldn’t get enough tennis,” Ponkka told me recently. “He was always observing, always watching, and all the spare time he had he was hitting against the wall. It wasn’t so much about his natural ability, but his absolutely unbelievable love of the game.”Salazar recalled: “Other kids that age watched cartoons. Frances only watched the Tennis Channel. If you didn’t want to talk about tennis nonstop, you couldn’t be his friend.”Physically, Frances had a good start — his dad, Frances Sr., was well over 6 feet tall and naturally athletic. “He never worked out, but he had this amazing six-pack,” Benton said of the father. But Ponkka insists that Frances’ genetic potential was a secondary consideration.“In tennis, the mental and the emotional are more important than the physical, and this was Frances’ unique talent. He moved well because he wanted it more than other kids, he wanted so badly to get to the ball,” he said. “He loved everything about the game, the smell of the new tennis balls, how the ball sounds on the racket.”Tiafoe in his family’s apartment in 2012. “From the beginning, he was an absolutely world-class competitor,” Vesa Ponkka said. “He hated to drill, he just wanted to compete.”Matt Roth for The New York TimesMisha Kouznetzov, who coached Frances in his junior years, helped get his homework done and sometimes gave Frances’ mother grocery money, says Frances’ drive came from more than love. “Look,” he said, “the kid was poor. He needed to get out of there, get out of Hyattsville. He wanted to make a name for himself and start making money for his family. So the level of hunger and desire during competing was always there. He was all in, he had no choice.”In a match, even a practice match, “he fought like crazy,” Ponkka said. When he lost to older kids, he would pester them for an immediate rematch. “There were days where he’d play five, six, seven matches in one day because he wanted to finally beat the guy. He learned how to win.”Indeed he did. I met Frances in person again for the first time in 14 years in late July. He was sitting in a barber chair in a utility building beside the Junior Tennis Champions Center courts getting his hair and makeup done before the filming of an ad for Cadillac, which had just signed him as a brand ambassador. His brand-new black Escalade was parked just outside, one of the many perks that have come from winning, a lot.I reminded him of the afternoon I spent with him in the cramped classroom, and he politely pretended to remember. As always, his schedule was overcrowded. As I talked to him he was surrounded — his agent, the producer, the cosmetician all hovering around him like worker bees around the queen. So I got to the point and asked him the most relevant question: When did he believe he was going to make it as a pro?“Oh I always believed it,” he said. “There was no doubt in my mind I was going to be a pro from the time I was 10 or 11. And I felt like that made the process very easy. I was only ever focused on one thing, and it showed in every match and tournament I ever played.”As the hair clipper buzzed and his agent fielded phone calls, I was definitely getting in the way, but I had to know just one more thing.“How’s your geography knowledge these days?”He beamed that gaptoothed grin that has won so many fans. “Yeah, well, I’ve been around the world so many times by now, I guess I know where I’m at.”Karsten Moran for The New York Times More

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      The Audacity of Big Foe

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      Frances Tiafoe’s rise has been the talk of the U.S. Open, but his path to the pros is difficult to follow for other young Black men hoping for a career in tennis.Frances Tiafoe has everything needed to be a difference maker in tennis.The swag. Calm and confident, Tiafoe danced off the court following his quarterfinal win on Wednesday, bathing in the roars from a packed crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.The strokes. Propulsive forehands and backhands. Easy, 135-mile-per-hour aces. Volleys with McEnroe-esque touch.The back story. The son of parents who emigrated from Sierra Leone, he learned the sport at the nonprofit tennis center that his contractor father, Constant, helped build.Then there’s the smile. Oh, that smile. Tiafoe flashes it quickly and often. Before matches, after matches, during matches. He exudes a joy for the game he is playing that is not only uncommon in professional sports, it’s magnetic.Until this week, Big Foe, as he is known, has flashed each of these qualities in teases, while never quite fulfilling his promise. But at this U.S. Open, Tiafoe, 24, has put it together. And by moving through the singles draw to Friday’s semifinals, his star turn has pulled in a far wider audience than is typical for tennis.“CONGRATS Young King!!! You earned it” LeBron James posted on Twitter after Tiafoe sprinted to the biggest win of his career in the round of 16, a four-set demolition of Rafael Nadal.Apologies to the rest of the field, but this tournament has so far been defined primarily by the celebration of two players: Serena Williams, who jolted the grounds to life during Week 1, and Tiafoe, the American fan favorite, who has kept the heartbeat pounding.Williams’s legacy is so pervasive that her power game can be seen in players throughout the women’s singles draw — particularly in the strong number of highly ranked Black women who first got into tennis because they saw themselves in Williams and her sister Venus.But men’s professional tennis has not seen a similar surge of Black talent. Can the game find a Black male player who will energize the next generations?At least one top Black male player from every generation since Arthur Ashe’s has lived with the same question.Yannick Noah, who won the French Open in 1983.MaliVai Washington, who made it to the Wimbledon finals in 1996.James Blake, the former top-five star who beat Nadal and then nearly defeated Andre Agassi at the 2005 U.S. Open.James Blake, who beat Rafael Nadal at the 2005 U.S. Open, was once a player tennis fans wondered would energize the next generation.Robert Caplin/New York TimesNow it seems to be Tiafoe’s turn. He can certainly move the needle with a win, but how much?Well, first off, any movement at all would be a start.Other than Tiafoe, there are a scant few Black men on the ATP Tour. And other than Tiafoe, Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime, 22, and the 36-year-old Frenchman Gaël Monfils, none appears capable of competing for major titles any time soon.What about in the college pipeline that continues to churn out solid professional players who are white?If you’re a regular reader of my column you may know that in the late 1980s I played college tennis at California-Berkeley. Back then, I was among a rough handful of Black collegiate players ranked in the top 100. It was basically the same small number in the 1990s — the same in the early 2000s.And now?“Not much has changed,” said Bryan Shelton, the first Division I college coach to win national titles in both men’s and women’s tennis. Shelton, an African American, was a star player at Georgia Tech during my era, and went on to have a solid professional career. Coaching Florida’s men to a championship last year, his team included his son, Ben, who made it into the singles and doubles draws at this year’s U.S. Open.In men’s college tennis, “There are maybe eight to 10 Black players in the top 100 rankings now,” he said. “So that’s a tick up, but let’s face it, only a slight one.”As we spoke, I remembered how, up through my early high school years, I used to be embarrassed to be seen with my tennis rackets. Tennis wasn’t exactly hip, and for a while I thought of going back to basketball or football, sports where I could easily blend in and not feel so alone.“Frances can help make tennis cool,” Shelton said. But then he cautioned, “At the same time, the roadblocks that existed before, exist now.”In many Black American communities, it’s hard to find tennis courts and nearly impossible to find easily accessible coaching. The United States Tennis Association is making strides in building up a network of junior programs across the country, through National Junior Tennis and Learning, started by Ashe in the 1960s to bring the game to underserved communities.Programs like the N.J.T.L. are making a dent in the push to develop players. Still, the cost of playing remains the most significant barrier for many. Becoming a nationally ranked junior requires group and private lessons, intense training and travel that can cost parents $30,000 per year, on the low end. And because players tend to need several years to develop their games, the layout could last six to 10 years.Chris Evert, a former player and an ESPN analyst, signed autographs while visiting kids from six Philadelphia-area chapters of National Junior Tennis and Learning, a program Arthur Ashe started in the 1960s to bring the sport to underserved communities.Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressHow many parents of any color can spend that kind of money?I’ve talked to numerous parents of young Black girls over the years who said they were willing to make the financial sacrifice because there are so many college opportunities — usually nine full scholarships per team at the Division I level — available for female tennis players.For the men? Shelton said Division I teams typically have only four and a half scholarships, and those are usually split among several players. Fewer scholarships means less incentive to pay the cost in time and money required to raise a college-level male player.Tiafoe was lucky. He was a prodigy — so good, so early that he turned pro at 17.What if Frances had not had the exposure and access to tennis in grade school that led to him becoming obsessed with the game?What if Martin Blackman, then director of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., had not spotted Tiafoe’s talent and helped his family handle the costs and training?“We wouldn’t be here talking about him,” said Blackman, now the head of the U.S.T.A.’s player development program. In other words, Tiafoe wouldn’t be Big Foe, a semifinalist at the U.S. Open, getting a shoutout from LeBron James. Tiafoe might not even be a tennis player at all.Full disclosure: When the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the N.J.T.L. was kind enough to give me its Arthur Ashe Award of Excellence in 2020, I interviewed Tiafoe over a videoconference for a celebratory gala.“I am the type of guy who can put two weeks together and win a Grand Slam,” he assured me, and I have to admit, at the time, with his ranking hovering around 50th in the world, I thought it a far-fetched statement.Now, I’m not so sure. More

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      In Maryland, Frances Tiafoe’s Former Home Rallies Behind Him

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      At the junior tennis club in College Park that gave Tiafoe his start and where he still trains, coaches and aspiring players cheer him on, and never stop working.COLLEGE PARK, Md. — At the Junior Tennis Champions Center, Frances Tiafoe, the young American who has barged into the men’s singles semifinals at the U.S. Open by playing fearless, joyful tennis, simply goes by Frances.On Wednesday afternoon, as Tiafoe played his quarterfinal match against Andrey Rublev of Russia, the center’s students, coaches and staff members broke from their regular routines and threw a party for the facility’s most popular alumnus, and a rapidly rising tennis star they know as a friend.On an indoor clay court, sitting on folding chairs — but more often standing in excitement — more than 40 people watched Tiafoe’s match on a large inflatable screen. They hollered and held their breath as Tiafoe overpowered Rublev in straight sets to become the first American man to make the U.S. Open semifinals since 2006, when Andy Roddick lost to Roger Federer in the final.Amid the cheers for Tiafoe’s gargantuan serves and deft drop volleys, no one was far removed from the spirit of the center itself and the hard work it teaches, which got Tiafoe, 24, this far in the Grand Slam tournament. Between sets, at a coach’s urging, players raced to the courts for a few minutes of practice.‘He’s Always Happy on the Court’Komi Oliver Akli, 50, the center’s senior director of player development, trained with Tiafoe before the U.S. Open. “He was on the court every day, trying to put some work in, and he was working so hard,” Akli said.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKomi Oliver Akli, a senior director of player development at the J.T.C.C. who immigrated to the United States from Togo in 1996, started working at the center in 2000, and met Tiafoe just a few years later when he was 5 years old.From a young age, Akli said he could tell Tiafoe had the skills to go far in professional tennis. “You don’t have to tell him too much stuff,” he said. “You just have to keep it simple for him. He just enjoys himself when he plays. He doesn’t care what it is.”There’s a room inside the facility, next to a fitness center and across the hall from the restrooms, with two desks, a cabinet and a refrigerator. Today, it serves as the offices of the center’s general manager and director of tennis. Until several years ago, the office still had two beds where Tiafoe, his twin brother Franklin, and their father Constant slept when Frances was a boy.Constant, who emigrated from Sierra Leone in the early 1990s, took a construction job on the crew that built the tennis facility, and he stayed on as a maintenance worker after it was completed. His starting salary was $21,000 a year, and the staff allowed him and his twin boys to sleep in the center a few nights a week and use the courts.When they weren’t at J.T.C.C., the twins stayed with their mother, Alphina, who also emigrated from Sierra Leone, but met Constant in the United States. Other relatives lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hyattsville, just a few miles south of College Park.Since they met, Akli, now 50, said Frances Tiafoe hasn’t changed. “He never gets upset,” Akli said. “Never. He’s always happy on the court, enjoying himself on the court.”The J.T.C.C. is a nonprofit club that is focused on encouraging and supporting players from diverse backgrounds and concentrates on recruiting promising players from its own backyard.“It’s not a typical tennis club,” Joe Wilkerson, a vice president of the center, said. “We’re not a club. We’re not an academy. We’re a hybrid of all those things, plus what we do with community outreach in D.C.”It has 32 indoor and outdoor courts with hard, green clay and red clay surfaces, and offers programs and classes for various skill levels and ages, from beginner adults to children and teenagers aspiring to become the next Serena Williams, Roger Federer or Frances Tiafoe.After beating Rafael Nadal in the fourth round of the U.S. Open on Monday, Tiafoe said in a news conference that “it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” adding that he worked hard for his parents.“I just had a big passion for the game,” he said. “Not even mainly for me, but to do it for them.”Watching Tiafoe defeat Nadal was a special moment for Akli, especially because of the training they did together in College Park leading up to the tournament, Akli said.“He was on the court every day, trying to put some work in, and he was working so hard,” Akli said, adding that Tiafoe was especially focused on his fitness to go far in matches. “He was there with Rafa the whole time.”A U.S. Open Watch Party, With PracticeErin Schaff/The New York Times“He’s very much available to everybody when they’re here,” Joe Wilkerson, a vice president of the tennis center, said of Tiafoe.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter Tiafoe took the first set against Rublev in a tiebreaker, Akli called out to the students, “Alright, guys. Let’s go.”The students jumped from their seats, grabbed their gear, and ran toward the facility’s indoor hard courts. Akli told the players to warm up and hit with a partner.“Then we can go back and watch another set,” he said.While the players hit forehands down the lines and cross-court backhands and forehands, Akli would occasionally check his phone, nestled in a basket of tennis balls, for the score of Tiafoe’s match.He was pleased to see Tiafoe tied at 4-4 in the second set, adding that Tiafoe had trained to go deep in sets if necessary. “I like the way he’s holding right now,” Akli said. “He knows his fitness.”Among the players who worked with Akli on Wednesday was Imani Jean, a 16-year-old who trains at the center full time. Imani starts her day at 7:30 a.m. for classes, tennis practice, fitness training, more tennis, and then more classes.Imani, who wants to play tennis at a Division I university before becoming a professional, said that she is inspired knowing she trains on the same courts where Tiafoe practiced and lived.“It definitely reassures me that I can get to that level,” she said.Even on days when he’s not playing in a tournament or training at the facility, Tiafoe’s presence is all around the grounds of the J.T.C.C., with framed pictures from when he was younger and enlarged news articles on the walls of the facility. Inside the lobby hangs a framed letter, with Tiafoe writing what he would have wanted to tell Arthur Ashe, the tennis star who died in 1993, after winning the ATP Ashe Humanitarian Award in 2020.“I know this is not just an award,” Tiafoe wrote. “It is a tremendous honor and a massive responsibility. I am not just that smiley kid on the rise anymore. I know I need to carry the torch and make a difference in the world.”Tiafoe went on to write that he wanted to be an example to younger children and “paint a picture for them that they did not know was possible.”“I want to help them make that a reality,” he wrote. “You showed so many of us the way, and now I want to pay it forward.”‘He Knows Them All By Name’Amari O’Brien, a 16-year-old who trains at the center full time, said she considers Tiafoe to be a friend.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWilkerson said that when Tiafoe is there, he makes himself open and accessible to the young players.“He knows them all by name,” Wilkerson said. “He’s very much available to everybody when they’re here. It’s probably sometimes to his own fault.”Amari O’Brien, 16, who trains at the center full time, said she considers Tiafoe to be a friend.“It’s just it’s kind of bizarre to think that he trained here,” Amari said, adding that she hopes that she can one day be in the same position as Tiafoe.Amari came to practice at the J.T.C.C. for two weeks in 2019, and earned a scholarship to train full time. Her parents eventually moved to Maryland from Michigan to support her.Wilkerson said that scholarships at the center help make tennis accessible to more people.“That is our ultimate goal,” Wilkerson said. “If a kid shows the promise and the passion and the love and respect for the game, then we will make sure that we can fund them and get them through the program.”It’s not just children and teenagers who come to the center. Charles Abety, 50, who lives in nearby Greenbelt, Md., started taking tennis lessons at the J.T.C.C. about four months ago.“I wanted to have something that I could do that I love,” Abety said while watching Tiafoe’s match, adding that he’s “very much” inspired by Tiafoe.After more training in the afternoon, the players returned to the watch party to see Tiafoe in the third set against Rublev. When Tiafoe won the set and clinched the match, advancing to the semifinals with an ace, the players, coaches, staff members, and parents of players at the center jumped to their feet and clapped.“Let’s go, J.T.C.C.” Akli yelled.But the applause and cheers were brief. The players didn’t stick around for Tiafoe’s post-match remarks on the court. They ran to grab their gear again. It was time to train.Erin Schaff/The New York Times More