Tiafoe, Frances (1998- )

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    Frances Tiafoe Talks of Family, His Game and Race

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    He rose to the top 10 this year and had a good showing at the U.S. Open. His family, he said, means “everything to me.”Frances Tiafoe was making the rounds. Upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside. Touching all corners of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, conducting 90-second interviews, shaking hands, trying hard to manage a smile for everyone in his path.It was the eve of the United States Open last month, and Tiafoe, 25, was returning to the scene of his greatest triumph, a semifinal finish at the 2022 Open that included an upset of the four-time champion Rafael Nadal.The Open represented Tiafoe’s coming-out party. Ranked No. 26 entering the tournament last year, he began this year’s Open in the top 10, largely on the strength of winning two ATP titles, in Houston and Stuttgart, Germany, this season. He also reached the semifinals at Indian Wells before losing to Daniil Medvedev.But Tiafoe, whose career began when his parents emigrated from Sierra Leone and his father became head of maintenance at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., struggled at the majors this year.He lost in the third round at the Australian and French Opens and at Wimbledon. At the U.S. Open, he was defeated in the quarterfinals by a fellow American, Ben Shelton.Tiafoe and Shelton were chosen by John McEnroe, the captain of Team World, to play in the Laver Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia.At last year’s cup, Tiafoe and Jack Sock beat Nadal and Roger Federer in the final match of Federer’s career. Tiafoe then beat Stefanos Tsitsipas to clinch victory for Team World. It was the first time in the five-year history of the event that Team Europe failed to win.The following interview has been edited and condensed.What was it like to play Roger and Rafa in Roger’s last match?Me and Jack were joking, should we go hard, should we not, should we make it a good show? I’m glad we went out there and played hard.The result was so irrelevant. Tennis won that night.What did you say to Roger when you met at the net after the final point?“Thank you for the last 20-plus years. Thank you not only for your on-court play, but for who you are as an individual. What you’ve done will never die.”At last year’s Laver Cup, Tiafoe and Jack Sock beat Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the final match of Federer’s career.Kin Cheung/Associated PressThen, in the clinching match, you had to save four match points against Tsitsipas?Man, it felt like I was down 100 match points. It was crazy. I had never experienced something like that before. Incredible shotmaking with legends sitting on the bench. It was an unbelievable atmosphere.When you look back on this year, do you say it’s been a great year, or that you need to kick it up a notch?I think it’s been a great year outside of the Slams. But the Slams are the only thing I really care about, to be fair.You’ve spoken about Arthur Ashe and the privilege of being a man of color in this sport. But Arthur also spoke of the burden he felt. Do you feel the pressure of being in this position and having to motivate others?One hundred percent, because it’s not like basketball or football, which are predominantly sports of color. Not only that you’re one of a few, but you’re doing it at a super high level. There are expectations, but people are looking up to you and wanting to be like you. You’re in a position to change people’s lives. It’s definitely a burden, but at the same time it’s a blessing.You have mentioned that right before you play a match, the most important thing is that your mother tells you how much she loves you. How critical is your family to your success?Family is everything to me. I’d do anything for my family. I play this game at a high level for my family. That’s one of my biggest motivations every day. My family can’t even believe we’re in this position.Is there one life goal that defines you?Probably that when I’m done, both of my parents will be able to kick up their feet. I want to be in a position to help kids in Sierra Leone play the game of tennis. It’s not really about me. More

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      At the U.S. Open, Coco Gauff and Company Stake Their Claim

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      Last year’s U.S. Open focused on goodbyes. This year, Gauff, the new singles champion, along with Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz, burst through the front door with plans to stay.Led by Coco Gauff and a cast of charismatic upstarts, tennis hit a sweet spot at this year’s U.S. Open with a diverse blend of old and right now, signaling the game is freshly and firmly energized as it enters a new era.No Serena Williams. No Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.No problem.True enough, Novak Djokovic, who won the 24th major title of his career on Sunday by beating Daniil Medvedev in the men’s singles final, is still performing his magic act. But conventional thinking contended that tennis would be in trouble when the legendary champions who propped up the professional game for roughly the past two decades began leaving the game en masse.At this tournament, the commanding arrival of Gauff, who won the women’s singles title Saturday evening, along with memorable performances by Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, proved that thinking wrong.At the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, a quartet of legends no longer stifled the game, overshadowing the sometimes stalled forward motion of the young players coming behind. You could feel it on the grounds, which filled with so many spectators that it often appeared there was no space to move without bruising a shoulder. This year’s event set attendance records nearly every day.“It’s incredibly invigorating to see a shift in personalities,” said Kate Koza, a Brooklynite and regular at the Open since 2016, echoing a sentiment I heard repeatedly during the event’s two-week run. “We’re not just seeing the same faces with the same mythical back story.”Tennis is changing, and no player embodied that more than the 19-year-old Gauff, who, ever since she burst onto the scene four years ago with a first-round win over Venus Williams at Wimbledon, appeared destined for this moment.Gauff overcome with emotion after beating Aryna Sabalenka in the women’s singles final.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIn these two weeks at the U.S. Open, she grew entirely into herself. Her dutiful parents — ever at her side all these years on tour, with her father as coach — gave her extra freedom and fell just enough into the background. Gauff thrived, making clear that she is now her own woman. Think of how she demanded that her new coach, Brad Gilbert, tone down his chatterbox instructions during her fourth-round struggle against Caroline Wozniacki.“Please stop,” she instructed, adding a firmness that showed she was the one to dictate her action at this event. “Stop talking!”At Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, she commanded the stage.She leaned into her speed and improving forehand to win four three-set showdowns during the tournament and played like a wily veteran in the most heart-pounding moments.She gained energy from the crowd — look, there’s Barack and Michelle Obama, and over there, Justin Bieber. “I saw pretty much every celebrity they showed on that screen,” she said, adding that she embraced the moment and vowed “to win in front of these people.”As she scorched a final passing shot past Aryna Sabalenka to take the title, falling to her back and then kneeling to soak in the moment through tears, Gauff claimed eternal space in the collective memory. Watching from a dozen rows back from center court, I felt goose bumps and shivers. The massive stadium shook and swayed, most of the 23,000 fans inside the stadium on their feet, cheering and chanting. They wanted this moment, this champion, this fresh start.Since Serena Williams won her first major title as a 17-year-old at the 1999 U.S. Open, the Open has had other Black champions. Her sister Venus in 2000 and 2001. Sloane Stephens in 2017. Naomi Osaka, who is Black and Asian, in 2018 and 2020.But Gauff is the first in a new era — a new champion in a new tennis world — one without the shadow of Serena. The torch has been passed.Sure, most fans hated to see the men’s No. 1 seed, Carlos Alcaraz, the Wimbledon champion, go down in an upset to Medvedev in the semifinals. The dream matchup had been a championship between Alcaraz and Djokovic, possessors of the hottest rivalry in men’s tennis.But if we’ve learned anything from the lockdown grip four genius players have had on tennis, it is that the expected course eventually becomes monotonous. Look at it this way: If Djokovic and Alcaraz finally face each other at the U.S. Open, the fact that they were barely denied a Flushing Meadows duel in 2023 will make their matchup that much sweeter.Last year’s U.S. Open, with its send-off celebration of Serena’s retirement and career, turned the page. This year’s tournament closed the book and put it back on the shelf.Ben Shelton’s sensational run at the U.S. Open lasted into the semifinals, where he lost to Novak Djokovic.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesYou could feel the exuberance in the air from the start, an energy that told a story: Djokovic remains — same as ever — but everyone else in the two fields seemed liberated by losing the shadow of Serena, Nadal and Federer.The men’s quarterfinals featured not only Alcaraz but two resurgent Americans in their mid-20s, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, a fan favorite for his willingness to connect with the crowd.As if to herald the fact that Black players are a budding, booming force in both the men’s and women’s game, Tiafoe and Shelton became the first African American men to face each other in the final eight of a major championship.That wasn’t the only notable footnote. The fast-rising Shelton, 20, was the youngest American to reach a U.S. Open semifinal since 1992. He walloped Tiafoe to get there, wowing crowds with 149-mile-per-hour serves and in-your-face competitiveness that showed he wouldn’t back away from any challenge — even if that challenge was Djokovic.After beating Shelton in a hard-fought, straight-sets win to advance to the men’s final, Djokovic mimicked the celebratory gesture Shelton had flashed throughout the tournament after victory — an imaginary phone to the ear, which he then slammed down, as if to say, “Game, set, match, conversation over.”The wise master remains, still willing to give an education to the young ones for a bit longer. More

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      Ben Shelton Beats Tiafoe and Advances to U.S. Open Semifinal

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      Shelton, 20, becomes the youngest American man to reach a U.S. Open semifinal since Andy Roddick in 2003.There was a time when a U.S. Open quarterfinal match between two big-hitting American men could just be referred to as “tennis,” rather than as a historic night for the sport in this country.This is the way the home Grand Slam tournament would always be for the country that has won the Davis Cup, the team event contested by several nations, more than any other. But it wasn’t that way, not for 18 years, and then on Tuesday night, two young Black men, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, made it so again.They came to it from different places — Tiafoe, the son of a maintenance man at a tennis center in suburban Maryland; Shelton, the son of a former top-60 tour pro who became a highly regarded college coach. During the last year, they have become brothers of a sort, Tiafoe, the 25-year-old veteran who has become one of the tour’s most popular players, guiding the 20-year-old Shelton, who didn’t have a passport a year ago, through his first season as a professional.“Great guy off the court, but on the court a nightmare to deal with,” Shelton said of Tiafoe over the weekend.Shelton’s serves, at nearly 150 miles per hour, have become the buzz of the tournament.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesShelton, the powerful lefty whose serves, at nearly 150 miles per hour, and 112 m.p.h. forehands have become the buzz of the tournament, was right about that.“Ben has wanted to play me at the Open for a long time,” Tiafoe had said in discussing his game plan. “Make him play a lot of balls, just try to make it a really tough night for him.”On a thick, sweaty and breezeless night at Arthur Ashe Stadium that seemed to get hotter as it wore on, Tiafoe and Shelton put on the sort of tight, nervy show that stretched past midnight and into Wednesday morning. The U.S. Open is known for its late-night spectacles, storied battles that only so many can stick with until the end. It wasn’t that way Tuesday and into Wednesday, as the stadium stayed loud and live and Shelton and Tiafoe traded punches and counterpunches from start to finish.When it was over Shelton had prevailed, 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2.Shelton struck early, playing the first set like a loose, midcareer pro who had done this before, his arm whipping serves and forehands as Tiafoe appeared tight and sloppy, giving up two service breaks and doing much of Shelton’s work for him.Tiafoe had his serve broken twice in the first set.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesBut then Tiafoe reverted to form, resisting playing the match like a testosterone-fueled hitting contest. He ground out points and games and let Shelton cool off and tighten up, as younger players often do, to draw even.The match turned on a crucial third-set tiebreaker, a seesaw battle that Shelton was on the verge of cruising through before hitting two consecutive double faults. Suddenly Tiafoe, who had given up control of the set a few games before, was on the precipice once more.Barring an injury or some other calamity, Shelton is likely to have plenty of moments like the one that happened next, with Tiafoe a point away from taking a two-sets-to-one lead.There is a specific sound that comes off Shelton’s racket when he lays into a serve or a stroke like only he and Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, can these days. It’s nothing like the familiar thwop of strings hitting a felt ball, but more like a sledgehammer nailing a spike into a railroad tie. Tiafoe’s serve was plenty good. Shelton’s forehand return blasted onto the line inches from the corner. Tiafoe barely moved for it.The match turned on a third-set tiebreaker won by Shelton.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“Sometimes you just have to shut off the brain, close your eyes and just swing,” Shelton said.Two errors later, Shelton had the set and, for all intents and purposes, the match, breaking Tiafoe’s serve in the first game of the fourth set and never looking back.“Left it all out there tonight,” Shelton said. “Emotional battle.”Next up is Novak Djokovic, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, in the semifinals on Friday.“Doesn’t get any better than that,” Shelton said.Maybe it will. More

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      This Year’s U.S. Open Belongs to Coco Gauff, Win or Lose

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      It has become clear that Gauff, at age 19, is the queen of this U.S. Open.It’s Sunday evening, a little after 6 o’clock, and Coco Gauff is going through her postmatch routine in the section of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where players warm up before matches and cool down after them.Two other stars of American tennis, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, who are among her close friends, are there, too. Tiafoe is winding down after his fourth-round U.S. Open win, which set up his all-American quarterfinals match against Shelton, who is getting ready to play a mixed doubles match. The friendly trash talk has begun, and Gauff cannot resist being involved. She knows just how to do it.Tiafoe, who spends a lot of time shirtless and does not lack for confidence when it comes to his rippling physique, and Shelton are playing this tournament in bright sleeveless shirts. Shelton looks better in his, Gauff tells Tiafoe.And, by the way, so does Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, who beat Tiafoe in the Open semifinals last year and who is also playing in sleeveless Technicolor. “You’re wearing confetti,” Gauff says.Then she is off to boast that she has gotten the better of one of the princes of the tournament and to make fun of her 60-something coach’s penchant for Jolly Ranchers and the dad-rock tunes he keeps sending her. She must also pose for the endless series of selfies that so many, especially Gen-Z fans, desperately want as they pay her their ultimate compliment.“My queen,” they say of her.In the quarterfinals on Tuesday, the sixth-seeded Gauff will face 20th-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, who eliminated top-seeded Iga Swiatek in her previous match. If Gauff wins, she will still have to find her way through two more pressure-packed matches to win the tournament. But over a week into the year’s final Grand Slam event, one thing has become clear: Gauff, at age 19, is the queen of this U.S. Open.Gauff, at age 19, has been a fan favorite at the U.S. Open.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesFans hurry across the grounds to get to their seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium before her singles matches. No one wants to miss her first fist-pumping “Come on!” or one of her ball-chasing points that go corner to corner, backcourt to net and then back again, and increasingly end with her cracking an overhead smash or with her opponent sending the ball into the net.The first-come-first-served seats on the smaller courts with general admission access begin to fill long before she and her doubles partner, Jessica Pegula, take the court. Organizers moved their doubles match on Monday into Ashe when space freed up in the late afternoon. They won.The N.B.A. player Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat is one of the many boldface names who have come out for her matches. Others include the singer Justin Bieber and his wife, Hailey, a model and influencer. They were in the house on Friday for Gauff’s third-round win over Elise Mertens. Butler was there, too, and returned for her fourth-round win over Caroline Wozniacki on Sunday.Gauff’s reaction: “Again?”Perhaps this was the way it was always going to go for Gauff, who at age 10 earned a coveted spot in the training program at the tennis academy of Patrick Mouratoglou, who coached Serena Williams.Like anyone who saw Gauff on the court then, Mouratoglou came away impressed with her early speed, power and ability to change direction in an instant and make a quality shot. He called her into his office for an interview, something he puts all of his prospects through, and asked her why she thought she could become a top-level player. She had appeared shy on the court, but now she looked him in the eye from the beginning of their conversation to the end, and told him she wanted this more than any other girl.A lot of players say that, Mouratoglou said in an interview on Monday. He started putting her on the court in matches against players who were more advanced in their development than she was. More often than not, she found a way to win.At 13, she made the final of the U.S. Open junior tournament. At 15, she beat Venus Williams on Centre Court at Wimbledon and made the fourth round.Gauff, right, and Venus Williams shook after Gauff defeated her in the first round at Wimbledon in 2019.Tim Ireland/Associated Press“She is ready for greatness,” Mouratoglou said. “Of course, she feels the pressure like everybody does, but the difference comes from having the belief that you belong there, that you are supposed to do well, that you may be in the spotlight but you enjoy having that pressure, pressure that she has had since she was a kid.”Living under that scrutiny, especially when early success arrives, can have its advantages and drawbacks. Women’s tennis during the past decade is replete with players who won a Grand Slam event in their late teens or early 20s, then struggled for the next year to win three matches in a tournament.During her first seasons on the tour, Gauff was impatient to reach the top, given her breakthrough at Wimbledon in 2019 and her run to the French Open final last year. Before this season, though, she spent some time studying the top 10 players and the recent Grand Slam tournament winners. She saw that many of them were peaking from age 22 to 26.She wasn’t yet 19, but she was about to begin her fifth season of top-level tennis. Her mother told her to be patient, that she didn’t have her “grown woman strength yet,” and said she would know when she got it.“I guess I’m not as mature as other players are,” she said one afternoon in Australia. “That’s going to come with life on earth, not how many years you are on tour.”Gauff waited for a serve while playing Elise Mertens.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesSome may disagree with that assessment. Three years ago, when she was 16, Gauff took the microphone at a Black Lives Matter rally in her hometown, Delray Beach, Fla., days after the murder of George Floyd.“No matter how big or small your platform is, you need to use your voice,” she told the crowd that day. “I saw a Dr. King quote that said, ‘The silence of the good people is worse than the brutality of the bad people.’ We need to not be silent.”This summer, she was one of the featured players at the Citi Open in Washington D.C. She had endured some disappointing results in the previous two months, losing to Swiatek for the seventh consecutive time at the French Open in the quarterfinals and bowing out in the first round of Wimbledon.But the role of a headliner at a midsize tournament comes with some responsibilities. Mark Ein, the owner of the Citi Open, watched as Gauff chatted with V.I.P.s, including a member of President Biden’s cabinet and a justice on the Supreme Court, as if it were business as usual. Then she went out and won the tournament, and Ein sensed there was something different about the teenager who had first played in his event in 2019.“She gave off this sense of being in control of the situation, both on the court and off,” Ein said. “Every once in a generation in tennis it seems there is someone who breaks through at a very early age, and the test is how you can handle it. The all-time greats seem to have a composure that lets them succeed.”Gauff’s ability to run down balls in the corners is one of her strengths.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesSince 2019, Gauff’s face has never been hard to find on billboards at any tournament where she is playing. Still, her management team at Team8, the boutique agency that Roger Federer began with his longtime agent, Tony Godsick, has tried to take a slow and steady approach.She could have deals with dozens of companies. So far, her portfolio beyond the usual racket and clothing sponsors, New Balance and Head, includes only Rolex, Bose, Barilla, Baker Tilly and U.P.S.Gauff still sometimes rocks back and forth when she is speaking in public. She will giggle at herself in the middle of a sentence. She is still over a year away from ordering a drink legally in the United States.If she loses to Ostapenko on Tuesday or to someone else in the days ahead, time will still be on her side for a long while. But in many ways, her time has arrived. More

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      Why Does Frances Tiafoe Change His Shirt So Often at the US Open?

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      During a changeover 26 minutes into his second-round match against Sebastian Ofner, Frances Tiafoe reached into his bag, pulled out a fresh top and changed his shirt. Twenty-four minutes later, up by 4-1 in the second set, he swapped that shirt for a clean one again.Between the second and third set, Ofner took a medical timeout. Tiafoe had been wearing his shirt for only about six minutes, but he was ready for another.Before the match ended, Tiafoe changed his teal sleeveless shirt once more. By the end of his straight-sets victory over Ofner, there was a pile of sweaty shirts by Tiafoe’s bench. He picked them all up and stuffed them into his bag before leaving the court. (Those shirts are later given to the U.S. Open staff members who take care of the laundry.)Through the fourth round, Tiafoe had changed his top 20 times, an average of five times per match.“I don’t want to feel like I’m playing with really sweaty clothes just because I’m not prepared,” Tiafoe said. “I know how much I can sweat.”Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesHe will usually return to his bench, hydrate and towel off his face and body before slipping into a fresh shirt. He has no specific method for determining when he needs to change. Sometimes he’ll grab a fresh shirt out of his bag at the end of a set. Other times, he will change multiple times in a single set.It is not uncommon for a player who has been sweating in a competition to change into a clean shirt a few times each match. But Tiafoe has taken freshening up to an elite, seemingly compulsive level.If he feels uncomfortable, he wants a fresh top.“You want to be as light as you can on the court,” Tiafoe said after his second-round victory, adding that if he feels even a small amount of moisture on his shirt, he’ll change it. “I’m very adamant about that.”Many athletes have quirks. Superstitious baseball players hop over foul lines to avoid bad luck. Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam champion, is steadfast about having two water bottles by his bench positioned diagonally from each other with the logos facing the court. For Tiafoe, it is a near obsession with changing shirts — perhaps more than any other player on the men’s tour.Tiafoe changing his shirt during his match against Sebastian Ofner.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAt tournaments, many players wear one outfit and stick with it; others swap out an outfit only if it is uncomfortable or seems unlucky. At last year’s U.S. Open, Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, asked an umpire for permission to change her outfit in the middle of a match.Players can change tops from their benches during matches. Men are allowed two opportunities to leave the court for a complete outfit change in a best-of-five match, and women are allowed one change of attire in a best-of-three match.“Shirts, socks and shoes should be changed on court,” the International Tennis Federation rule book says.At this year’s U.S. Open, Tiafoe has sported a teal, sleeveless top patterned with shades of baby blue, coral, peach and maroon. He has completed his ensemble with teal shorts and a pair of bright red shoes with his nickname, Big Foe, across the heels.Tiafoe said he packed as many as 20 tops in his bag to be sure he had enough for his matches. He also takes two extra pairs of shoes, in case a pair becomes too sweaty.“I don’t want to feel like I’m playing with really sweaty clothes just because I’m not prepared,” Tiafoe said. “I know how much I can sweat.”And Tiafoe sweats a lot. In a couple of his matches at this tournament, even after he has changed shirts, Tiafoe has needed help from a ball crew member to peel his shirt off his back because the top had stuck to his shoulders.Tiafoe asking a ball boy to help him unroll his shirt.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe weather at the U.S. Open has appeared to play a role in how many times Tiafoe has changed clothes.In his first-round match, the humidity levels made playing conditions feel muggy inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. In that match, against Learner Tien, Tiafoe changed his shirt six times.But even after a cold front swept through New York in time for Tiafoe’s second- and third-round matches, he perspired enough to change four times on Wednesday against Ofner and four times on Friday against Adrian Mannarino.By his fourth-round match against Rinky Hijikata on Sunday, temperatures had reached 88 degrees. This week, the forecast is for humid days with temperatures into the 90s through Thursday, above normal for this time of year in New York, before settling into the 80s for the semifinals and final.When Tiafoe plays Ben Shelton in the quarterfinals on Tuesday that will probably mean more sweat and more shirt changes.But who’s counting? More

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      At the U.S. Open, It Feels Like the Fourth of July

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      A decade or so ago, back when Tommy Paul, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe were rowdy teenagers raising hell at the United States Tennis Association dormitories in Florida, they dreamed that days like Sunday at the U.S. Open would eventually come.Coco Gauff and Ben Shelton were barely 10 years old back then, still figuring out how large a role tennis was going to play in their childhoods, though it was a safe bet it would be pretty large.Flash forward to Sunday at the U.S. Open, and those five players were at the center of what figured to be a daylong American tennis festival in the fourth round, a part of the tournament when, for so long, especially on the men’s side, players from Europe have filled the starring roles. Not on Sunday, when the year’s final Grand Slam tournament got down to serious business and the round of 16.With Ben Shelton facing Tommy Paul, it guaranteed an American would advance to the quarterfinals. It ended up being Shelton.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe schedule featured wall-to-wall red, white and blue; Black and white and mixed race players; players from wealthy families (Fritz), from more humble means (Shelton, Gauff, Paul), and one (Tiafoe) who started with almost nothing; some players with years of tour experience and one so raw (Shelton) that he needed to get a passport last year so he could leave the United States for the first time to play in the Australian Open.“We always believed this would happen,” said Martin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the U.S.T.A., who has known all five players since their early years. “But you never know when.”When Serena Williams, a majestic and groundbreaking figure in sports and culture for more than two decades, retired from pro tennis at this tournament last year, she left big questions about who might begin to fill the massive void she was leaving, especially in American tennis. Some pretty good hints arrived within days. Gauff and Tiafoe — charismatic figures with bright eyes and big smiles who play with equal parts heart, skill and athleticism — blazed into the deep end of the 2022 tournament, the quarterfinals for Gauff and the semifinals for Tiafoe.That was last year, though, and there was no guarantee that they or any of their compatriots would reproduce the magic of some of those days. Sunday represented a decent midpoint indicator.Looking at the draw in the middle of last week, Fritz’s eyes drifted to the quarter just above him, where Shelton, Paul and Tiafoe were crowded together. Some big names were out, and his people were still very much alive. Immediately he thought, “One of them is going to be in the semis,” and that was pretty cool.Paul won the third set after losing the first two, but he could not force a decisive fifth set.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPaul and Shelton got the action rolling at noon Sunday in the opening match at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The stands were filling up more with every changeover, getting louder each time Shelton’s booming serve put up big numbers on the radar gun.Two adrenaline-fueled blasts clocked in at 149 miles per hour as he built a commanding two-set lead before Paul came alive with the crowd rallying behind him. The stadium was near its capacity of 23,000 by the time his last forehand sailed long. It wasn’t the outcome Paul wanted, but the match had its moments.Early on, he looked up at the video board and saw that he and his buddies were on the list of Americans left in the tournament. He let that sink in, those names from the dormitory hall, names that were there in the late rounds of the junior national tournaments in his teenage years.“We grew up all together,” Paul said shortly after the loss. “Kind of cool.”Every Grand Slam tournament crowd throws its weight behind its home-country players. At the Australian Open, the “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy, Oy Oy!” chant is a constant refrain. French crowds break out in spontaneous renditions of “La Marseillaise.” At Wimbledon, Britons will pack a field court to urge on a junior player they have never heard of with the same vigor they offer Andy Murray.The U.S. Open crowd, by reputation the rowdiest and most indecorous of them all, does its boisterous best to get its own over the line.Shelton, 20, hugged Paul at the net wanting to hear just what full-throated screams from the biggest crowd he had ever played before might sound like. Hard to blame him on that front.Shelton played to the crowd after his victory. His next opponent, Frances Tiafoe, is something of a showman, too.Karsten Moran for The New York Times“Amazing atmosphere, felt the love all day,” he said on the court moments later.And it stayed that way as Gauff played against Caroline Wozniacki, a former world No. 1. Wozniacki is on the comeback trail after having two children and has long been a crowd favorite in New York.That said, she had never played Gauff on a day that felt like a flashback to a couple generations ago, back to the eras when American men and women always held the promise of becoming the class of the sport and were among its biggest stars. This was part tennis match, part revival meeting, with more screams of “Go Coco!” than anyone could count in a building that Gauff, who is just 19, figures to be making her home for the next decade.A slight complication, a welcome one for the hometown crowd, arose as 4 p.m. approached when Tiafoe strutted into Louis Armstrong Stadium to play Rinky Hijikata of Australia just as Gauff was finding her groove. Like a parent facing a choice between children, Blackman needed a plan.“First set with Coco, then over to Frances,” he said as he rushed through a hallway underneath the stadium.Coco Gauff faced Caroline Wozniacki, a former world No. 1 popular with fans, but still enjoyed a partisan crowd.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesSlight complication for Gauff, too, in the form of a late-second and early third-set wobble that had her hitting backhand after backhand into the middle of the net. Wozniacki surged into the lead, breaking Gauff’s serve in the first game of the third set. But Gauff and her 20,000 friends weren’t about to let that last for long, not on this day. With a slew of “Come ons!” and teeth clenches she reeled off the final six games, bulldozing her way back into the quarterfinals.“Had some chants going, which was really nice,” Gauff said later. “The crowd doesn’t really compare to any of the other Slams.”She won two of the three U.S. Open tuneup tournaments and, despite dropping sets in three of her first four singles matches, is brimming with confidence.“I’ve been in this position before,” said Gauff, a French Open finalist last year. “I can go even further.”Meanwhile, over on Armstrong, Tiafoe was cruising.If Ashe is American tennis’s grand cathedral, Armstrong is its party space, a 10,000-seat concrete box with an upper level of seating that seems to hang almost directly above the court and a retractable roof that keeps sound echoing up and down and all around even when open. And no one these days, other than Carlos Alcaraz, knows how to throw a party like Tiafoe, 25, who broke into the top 10 of the rankings for the first time earlier this year.Tiafoe defeated Rinky Hijikata in straight sets at Louis Armstrong Stadium before turning the court over to Taylor Fritz.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe drunker and more spirited the fans the better as far as he is concerned. He pumps his fists, shakes his racket, and even throws out the occasional tongue wag after those curling forehands and jumping two-handed backhands, to make it just how he likes it, with as many hollers of “Go Big Foe!” as he can wring from them. It’s how he has long believed American tennis should be, and part of the reason he is Paul’s favorite player to watch in the sport.Up next for Tiafoe is Shelton, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.“He’s going to come after me, and I’m going to come after him,” he said. “I plan on being in the semi.”Then it was Fritz’s turn, filling the early evening slot on Armstrong, and taking the court shortly after Tiafoe left it, against Dominic Stricker, 21, of Switzerland, one of the surprises of the tournament. Stricker had to win three matches in the qualifying tournament to get into the main draw and he upset Stefanos Tsitsipas, a two-time Grand Slam singles finalist, in the second round. He had already played 22 sets of tennis in New York, including two five-setters, before he hit his first ball against Fritz.Taylor Fritz ended the run Dominic Stricker made out of the qualifying tournament by beating him in straight sets on Sunday.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMuch of the Tiafoe crowd filed down the stairs into the main plaza of Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Waiting at the bottom were thousands more ready to take their place, Honey Deuces, Aperol spritzes, beers, poke bowls and fries in hand.Three American headliners had already moved on, and roughly three hours later Fritz had joined them, with a straight-sets win over Stricker, to make his second career Grand Slam singles quarterfinal, and his first since Wimbledon in 2022.“No other place I’d rather go on a run than here,” Fritz said.Madison Keys and Jessica Pegula were set to play each other in the fourth round Monday, and Peyton Stearns, out of Ohio and the University of Texas, was set to take on Marketa Vondrousova, this year’s Wimbledon champion. This home-country party was rolling on. More

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      At the U.S. Open, Frances Tiafoe Picks Up Where He Left Off

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      Tiafoe, who made a sensational run to the semifinal in New York last year where he ran into Carlos Alcaraz, got an easy first-round win over Learner Tien on Monday.The last time Frances Tiafoe was playing a match inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, it was under the lights last year in front of a teeming crowd of 23,000, roaring with every point, as he tried to topple Carlos Alcaraz, the eventual U.S. Open champion and No. 1, in the semifinals.Michelle Obama was sitting in the front row of the President’s Box, urging him on within earshot. There were N.B.A. players in the lower bowl, including Bradley Beal, then a star of Tiafoe’s beloved Washington Wizards, as well as a slew of Tiafoe’s friends and relatives lucky enough to land tickets for the biggest match an American man had played at the U.S. Open in years.On Monday, Tiafoe, a 25-year-old from Maryland who has catapulted himself into a different level of sports celebrity, experienced something a little different in Ashe Stadium than what transpired a year ago. Opening day at the U.S. Open is an opportunity for tennis fans, even those with a ticket for Ashe, to wander the grounds in search of the up-and-comers, or to take in a tight four-hour match between middling pros at close range.The result can be a lifeless, half-empty atmosphere in the biggest stadium in the sport, especially for a mostly one-sided win like Tiafoe’s 6-2, 7-5, 6-1 drubbing of Learner Tien, a 17-year-old Californian likely to have better days at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in the future. From Tiafoe’s perspective, that was good. The only thing that would have boosted the buzz would have been a match far tighter than Tiafoe, the tournament’s 10th seed and one its most popular players, would have wanted.And yet, while there may not have been too much buzz in the big stadium, there was plenty pulsing through Tiafoe, who knows this U.S. Open is far different than any he has played before.“A bunch of new experiences today,” Tiafoe, a favorite for the first time on Ashe, said in his news conference after the match.That dynamic has consequences, both literal and figurative, good and potentially complicating, since they are loaded with reminders of Tiafoe’s new status.It was the first time his team got to sit in the player’s box belonging to the favorite, on the west side of the court, forcing Tiafoe to pivot his head in a different direction for support. As the favorite, he got introduced to the crowd and entered the court after Tien. That meant he sat in the chair on the left side of the chair umpire rather than on the right side, farther from the entrance, where the underdog traditionally walks to.Everywhere he looked, there was a reminder of who he is now, just like it has been all week as he moved between sponsor events — he has a shiny new Cadillac Escalade in his driveway — and other appearances. And then the tennis began.“I’ve never played a match before where I was supposed to win on Ashe,” he said.How Tiafoe handles all this will go a long way toward determining how many wins he can manage at the tournament every American man desperately wants to win. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the last time it occurred, when Andy Roddick grabbed his lone Grand Slam singles title before the rise of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.The expectations are high.“They should be,” said Martin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the United States Tennis Association, who has known Tiafoe since his elementary school days.“It’s a lot,” said Ray Benton, the chief executive of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., where Tiafoe’s unlikely rise to tennis stardom began. Tiafoe’s father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, was a maintenance man in the early years of J.T.C.C., where the tennis pros first noticed how proficient his young son was at hitting a tennis ball against a wall.Benton was at Tiafoe’s match on Monday and has been in contact with him over the summer.“He’s a little —” Benton paused and with his arms imitated someone who was experiencing the inevitable weight of expectations, the biggest of which are those Tiafoe has set for himself. “In some ways all he can do is disappoint.”As well as the season has gone for Tiafoe, including wins in tournaments in Houston and Stuttgart, Germany, he has fallen short of his own goals at the most important events. He has lost in the third round at the year’s first three Grand Slam tournaments.He was downright despondent after he played arguably his worst match of the year in a three-set loss to Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria at Wimbledon on grass, a surface he loves and that would figure to suit his aggressive and creative game.At heart, Tiafoe, who burst onto the scene in 2019 when he made the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and quickly broke into the top 30, is a showman, an entertainer who loves to play off the energy of the crowd. One of the challenges from his earliest years has been figuring out how to do that most effectively.A typical Tiafoe sequence occurred Monday during a tight second set against Tien. With the score knotted at 4-4, Tien rose and twisted and snapped a backhand overhead that looked like a certain winner. Tiafoe chased it down and threaded the needle with his shot, zipping it between the umpire’s chair and the net post to set him up for what seemed like a crucial break of Tien’s serve. Then he did his trademark frozen stare into the crowd, his cue for the fans to get loud. They did.But then he lost his own serve with a series of careless errors — a forehand into the net and an overhead wide — allowing Tien a chance to draw even in the set once more. Megan Moulton-Levy, a former pro who is the general manager of player development at J.T.C.C. and has been a mentor to Tiafoe for years, spoke earlier this summer of her long talks with Tiafoe about cracking the code of entertaining and using the energy of his ever growing fan base without burning too much energy or losing his focus.“He’s such a social guy,” Moulton-Levy said in an interview earlier this month. “He has this big beautiful personality, so what he has to do is manage how to turn it on and off through the course of a match. He has to figure out when and how to let it show.”Tiafoe spoke of his search for balance Monday after his win over Tien, of choosing when to fire up a crowd that will undoubtedly be in his corner during this tournament and that is coming to Queens specifically to see him, and of when to focus on the taxing task of winning best-of-five-set matches.“I don’t want to gas out in the first set,” he said, noting that it would be important especially as the tournament wore on, and the hype and excitement and the interest of all those A-list names and countless others among the Tiafoe faithful took note of another, he hoped, deep run.“I have to keep winning so they stay interested,” he said. More

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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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      Frances Tiafoe Is Ready to Win the U.S. Open and Make Tennis Cool

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      Returning to the U.S. Open after last year’s electric run and crushing defeat, the boundary-busting American thinks he can win it all — and make tennis cool.One year ago, Frances Tiafoe headed to the U.S. Open, beloved within the tennis world but a relative unknown outside it. He emerged as the first American man to reach the U.S. Open semifinals since 2006, and the first Black American man since Arthur Ashe.Tiafoe did it by upsetting the great Rafael Nadal in an emotional, magnetic match in, as a colleague put it at the time, “a stadium packed to the rafters with the sound bellowing off the roof after nearly every point.” When he eventually lost in the semis to Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set banger, Michelle Obama asked to see him afterward, to thank him and console him. And the national media rushed to tell his story — an unusual one in a predominantly white, wealthy sport.Heading into this year’s Open, Tiafoe is the world No. 10. No longer the underdog, he is now contending with the burden and blessing of expectations and the distractions of sports celebrity. I sat down with him one week before the Open, at the Rock Creek Tennis Center in Washington, D.C., not far from where he grew up. We talked about whether his story really represents “the American dream,” if he’s looking forward to Novak Djokovic’s retirement, and … pickleball. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.Listen to the Audio Version of This InterviewFrances Tiafoe Is ReadyI am wondering what it’s like at this moment in your career. You’re being profiled in magazines. I just saw you in Vanity Fair. You’ve got N.B.A. stars in your box. It’s got to be pretty wild.Yeah, I talk about it all the time. That saying that your life can change overnight is 100 percent true. After I beat Rafa Nadal at last year’s Open, I felt like I was looked at totally different. You don’t realize what you’re doing, how crazy it is, while you’re doing it because you’re doing it. I think afterward, going home and buying little things at CVS and ladies are like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this is you.” It’s been crazy. It’s definitely not meant for everybody. It’s definitely a life shift.Can you tell me a little bit about that? I mean, very few people will have that experience.You need to really have solid people around you. Everybody says that but don’t really live by it. A lot of people are going to want to take your time. All of a sudden, everyone wants to be your best friend. The famous guy wants to hang out, and he can do it at that time, but you maybe need to not do that. And I think the biggest thing for me is learning to say no. I still need to do a much better job of that. I’ve seen it eat a lot of people up. It gets to people’s heads.What have you said no to that you wanted to do?Even little things, like an appearance with one of my new brand partners that would have been a cool sit-down with Matt Damon, who I’m a big fan of. But I can’t do it, can’t go. I got to play a tournament. And it’s like, ahhh.You know, like, going on “The Shop” with LeBron — stuff that I’ve wanted to do, but scheduling just hasn’t quite worked out. And then obviously parties. You’ll get invited, but you probably should play a tournament. The reason people know you? You should probably stay on that.When you say you’ve seen other people get pulled off their path —People who are so hot for a second and then you just don’t hear about. And I think that’s the difference between one-hit wonders and people with longevity. It’s just that they’re so obsessed with what they’re doing and what got them to a certain place.I want to talk a little about your back story. You’re the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone. When you were little, your father literally helped build an elite tennis center in College Park, Md., as a construction worker. And then he got a job there as its custodian. And you actually lived there part time with your dad and your twin brother. And you started training there at the age of 5, which is incredible.Tiafoe training with Nikola Andjelic, a footwork coach, in 2012 at the tennis center in College Park, Md., where Tiafoe’s father worked.Matt Roth for The New York TimesThese details of your life are the headline of most articles about you. Does it feel like people get your story right? Are there things that you feel like people don’t understand when they talk about the way you came up?I feel like people do and don’t. People hear it, they know about it, but I don’t think they realize how crazy it actually is. I mean, I really was a big long shot, a huge long shot. And it just goes to show that being great at something is just having a level of obsession, and that’s what I had. I just hope it inspires a lot of people, honestly.You talked about how extraordinary your story is. And I guess there’s a couple of ways that you can think about it. Version one is that this is the American dream, that a family can come to this country, and within a generation their son can be one of the top 10 tennis players in the whole world. But I think there’s another version, which is that without an incredible amount of luck, you could have been just as talented, you could have been just as driven as you are, and yet never have become a professional tennis player.How do you think about the balance between those two versions — that your story shows both the incredible opportunities in America, but also that there are these inequalities that mean that it’s much harder for someone like you to be able to get to where you are?Ironically, I look at it more as the second version.Really? So then what does your story say about why there aren’t more Tiafoes?Well, it’s the lack of access, right? The biggest thing with the game of tennis is that it’s so hard to just start to play. Like very, very tough for people in low-income areas to just play the game of tennis. Shoes, rackets, clothes, stringing, court time. If it’s cold and you play inside, you pay for the court. You pay for coaching. I mean, if I’m a young kid, why wouldn’t I just go and play basketball, where I need three other guys to play two-on-two and a hoop? It’s a no-brainer.I think that’s the crazy thing. I imagine if I wasn’t, as you said, wasn’t in that situation —That your dad got the job at this place that allowed you to have the opportunity to be seen and to play.Think about how many people, if they were in my situation, could be doing what I’m doing. People that come from similar backgrounds as me, could do something special. That’s what I think about. Why aren’t more people lucky enough to be in that position?There have barely been any elite Black American male tennis players. How do you diagnose that problem?That’s why I look at my story that way. I mean, 50 years until an African American male made a semifinal of the U.S. Open? Fifty years. You’re telling me in 50 years a Black male can’t be in the semifinal of the U.S. Open?Granted, it was a great accomplishment for me! But I don’t want to wait another 50.I want to ask you about a separate issue, or maybe you think it’s connected. But there’s a real question about why American male players in general have struggled so much in the past two decades. An American man hasn’t won a Grand Slam since 2003. And until your run last year, there really haven’t been any U.S. stars on the men’s side in the way there were before. Agassi and Sampras, McEnroe, Connors. Why do you think American men in general have had such a hard time?That’s always a funny question. I’ve been dealing with it for a long time.I think it is a bit of a separate issue from what we were just speaking about. My rebuttal to it is always: It doesn’t really matter where your flag is from. Essentially it was four guys winning Grand Slams for a decade. One of the guys is still going at it, however old he is. He doesn’t seem like he’s stopping.He’s 36. Djokovic.Exactly. So I don’t think that’s really a flag issue. I think that’s just an era issue. I mean, the best decade of tennis ever.But we’re at this changing-of-the-guard moment. Roger Federer retired last year. Nadal, who you beat last year at the U.S. Open, is having a tough season with injuries. He’s also talked about retiring. Djokovic is still very much in the mix, but he is indeed 36 years old. Are you secretly glad these guys are winding down?Yes and no. My goal when I was younger, I wanted to beat one of those guys in the highest-level event. You want to be the best, so you’ve got to beat the best. So I’m not like, Oh, man, I can’t wait for these guys to stop. I think that’s a bad mentality. I think it’s I’ve got to get better. I’ve got to beat these guys.I mean, I’m playing Rafa last year. I should have more legs than he has. Should! And it motivates me. Because even if Novak retires, you have new guys. Carlos Alcaraz is very good. There’s always going to be someone who you’re going to have to beat.So, um, nah.Tiafoe, right, playing Rafael Nadal at last year’s U.S. Open. Tiafoe said that after winning that match, he really believed he could win the whole thing.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesI was watching this conversation you had with Chris Eubanks and Ben Shelton, two other young Black American players. And you said, “We’re going to be the reason why the game changes.” What did you mean by that?I just think diversity in sports, right? You bring a whole different demographic to the game. It’s history, and you’re watching it live. It’s the reason why Chris Eubanks’s run at Wimbledon was so big. It’s iconic stuff in a predominantly white sport. So I think we have a bit of a different impact. You start seeing more people of color in the stadium, paying that hard-earned money to come watch because it’s history, it’s different.How does that make you feel, that more people are using their hard-earned money to come to the stands? People of color that you’re bringing into the sport?It means everything to me. It means everything to me, but at the same time it’s like, damn, you feel the responsibility to perform, to be your best self for them.It’s interesting. You’ve just discussed this tension, which is feeling really great to be able to inspire people, but also feeling like it’s a burden. And I think most people of color who are successful would say that it’s really difficult to be the first and the only. Because there is this tension. Do you feel like it pushes you farther, or do you feel like it sometimes can weigh you down?It’s a great question. First off, yeah, as you achieve it, you definitely think about that. I don’t want to be the first and only, as I said earlier. But I think it inspires me, man. It really does. It makes me want to have longevity with this thing at a high level. Because you think about Serena and Venus. That’s why you create a Sloane Stephens winning a Grand Slam. That’s why you create a Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka. And that’s the position I want to be in, right?But the job doesn’t end until you do the ultimate goal, and that’s to win a Grand Slam.That’s your goal right now? That’s the thing?That’s the only thing that matters, to be fair. If I win a Grand Slam, there’s nothing anyone could say or ask of me after that.So you’ve been pretty vocal about how you think tennis should modernize and bring in new fans. You’ve said you’d like to see the sport borrow from basketball and be more relaxed when it comes to fan behavior. Why do you think that would be a good thing?People are like, oh, that’s not this game, that’s not tennis. Well, the question was how do we bring in younger fans? If you go to a soccer game, you go to a football game, a baseball game, you’re not quiet, are you?No.It’s entertainment. Obviously with tennis you need a little bit more structure. But for example, in between games, when people are standing on top of the stadium and ask the usher, “Well, when can I come down? I’m paying for tickets and I can’t even come and go as I please?”I don’t want to change the whole way of it, but within reason. I think a lot more young people would be like, OK, this is cool. You know, music playing more constantly, maybe in between points or in high-pressure moments.You think about the U.S. Open atmosphere, and they’re doing it anyway. Like, I’m playing in that stadium, it’s rockin’. People are drunk out of their minds, they’re just screaming whenever they want. You can’t control the environment anyway, so you might as well let it rock.But, hey, man, I don’t make the rules.OK, I have a question for you. What do you think of pickleball?[Laughs] I think it’s a sport I should invest in. I don’t think it’s a sport that I like. I don’t think it’s a great sport. But from the business side, I love it.I don’t think it takes very much skill. I go to Florida and I see a lot of older people playing and joking with the kids and having fun, but as far as creating all these leagues and tournaments and pro events, I just feel like tennis players who couldn’t quite do it out here are trying to make something out there.And they’re closing down tennis courts in order to make pickleball courts.For that sport to have an effect on the game of tennis, it’s ridiculous to me.Thank you for indulging me. To get back to your generation: There’s a lot of buzz around Carlos Alcaraz. He’s 20, he’s won two Slams, and it looks like he’s just getting started. Are you worried he’s a player who’s becoming the guy to beat?The man whom Tiafoe calls “the guy to beat,” Carlos Alcaraz.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesA disappointing end to Tiafoe’s emotional run at last year’s U.S. Open.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesNo, it’s good! It’s good. He’s good. He’s good for the game. Hell of a player. He is going to be special. He’s going to be a guy that’s going to push me to always want more and be at my best, because if I want to achieve anything special, I got to go through him. Once Novak leaves, he’s the guy to beat.That brings me to where you are right now. You’re world No. 10. You’ve won a couple of tournaments this year, but you’ve also been knocked out early in others, including a heartbreaker at Wimbledon. How do you evaluate your overall performance this year?I think I’ve had a good year. I’ve won 30-something matches. I’ve won a couple titles. I’m probably the most consistent I’ve been this year as far as week to week. But I’d much rather take more L’s, more losses, with a deeper run in a Slam. So we got one more shot. And obviously I want to go deep and put myself in title contention.How are you preparing for that?I know what I want to do. I know I want to win the event. It’s a matter of beating the guys you’re supposed to beat. But it is what it is. I’m 25. It doesn’t have to be right now.I want to ask you a little bit about the specifics of your game. You changed coaches. You reworked your technique, particularly your forehand. I watched the Netflix “Break Point” episode — that’s the documentary series about the tennis tour — and there was a lot of talk about your focus, about trying to up your consistency. So when you think about how your game has changed, do you think the shift has been more mental or more physical?The physical side has played a part. I’ve gotten much more fit, much more lean in the last couple years. But I think the mental side is the biggest thing. I’ve just made a choice. I made a choice that I’m committing to the game. I made a choice that I’m going to be more professional. I made a choice that I’m going to sacrifice a bit more of my outside tennis activities. Pick your moments of whatever pleasure — trying to just put tennis as the No. 1 priority.So saying no to LeBron.[Laughs] Yes.Of his chances at this year’s U.S. Open, Tiafoe said, “I always feel like I can do something special in New York.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWas there a moment when you made that choice?Yes. Going into the pandemic, I was not in a good place. Playing horribly. I was just enjoying life and got really complacent and it showed in my game a lot. It was the first time I really went through adversity as it pertains to the game of tennis. Losing a lot of matches and I didn’t really know how to handle it. So that was very tough.And then, just having a conversation with my boys, looking at the rankings, I’m like, dude, these guys ahead of me, they’re not better than me. Like, this is not reality. This can’t be my reality. And then from that point, I hired coaches. A lot of my team is new. My fitness coach travels with me much more. I started just slowly making choices. Being coachable. Stop trying to act like I know everything. Just slowly break old habits, which is very tough. It’s been a long process, but it’s been good. These last three years have been good. I’ve changed a lot.I want to take you back to last year’s U.S. Open. Because, you know, losing is terrible for everyone, but it feels like it hits you particularly hard. In your postmatch interview after you lost in the semifinals, even though it was this incredible moment, you said, and I’m quoting here, “I feel like I let you guys down.” Who did you feel like you let down?The country.The country?The country. I’ve never felt that much weight. Never felt that much energy. I checked into my hotel three weeks prior to that match. It was kind of like, whatever, nobody was really bothering me. Then at the end, I have security outside my door, people are going crazy, I’m all over New York, can’t go anywhere, everyone’s coming to the match.And I really believed I could do it. After I beat Rafa, after I backed up that win and I gave everything I had. You know, it just wasn’t good enough. And at that particular moment, I genuinely felt that way. I felt like I let those guys down. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, but I was letting them know that I want to come back and finish the job. It was an emotional moment. It was very tough. No competitor wants to feel like they fell short.And now on the cusp of this year’s Open —I feel like I’m in a pretty good place. Going in, momentum-wise, it hasn’t been a great couple of weeks. But honestly, no matter how I’ve played going in, I always feel like I can do something special in New York. That crowd behind me. There’s something about people getting behind you and wanting it more than you almost do. You feel like you don’t have a choice but to give everything. More