Joao Fonseca, with a big Davis Cup win and a Laver Cup debut, smells like team spirit

Expectations can change quickly in tennis. All it takes is one really good player—a “generational talent,” as we say these days—to upend our idea of what’s possible on a court.

For the better part of a decade, as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic continued to run the show well into their 30s, the teen prodigy, once a staple of the sport, was considered a thing of the past. And as the men’s game became more of a physical test, it seemed less and less likely that someone fresh out of the juniors could take the tour by storm.

Then Carlos Alcaraz took it by storm.

In 2022, at 19, he won the US Open and became the youngest No. 1 in ATP history. Since then, he and Jannik Sinner, 24, have made tennis young again. Along the way, they’ve also made the prodigy viable again.

That may help explain why Joao Fonseca, then 18, stirred up such a frenzy when he started this season by beating ninth-seeded Andrey Rublev, in straight sets, in the first round of the Australian Open. He had already wowed—or Jhuh-wowed—the cognoscenti with his win at the Next Gen Finals the previous fall, and he’d followed that with a title run at a Challenger in Canberra. When he qualified for the AO, beat Rublev to run his win streak to 14, and pushed Lorenzo Sonego to five sets in the second round, a brand-new star appeared to have been born.

Fonseca’s star, and ranking, continued to rise through the spring. He immediately won his first tour-level title, in Buenos Aires, and did the same at another strong Challenger in Phoenix. After that, he was welcomed like a conquering hero to Miami by sea of green-and-gold-draped Brazilians. There were shades of Alcaraz, not just in his early success, but in the raucous fan support he brought with him wherever he went.

As many commentators noted, the precocious Fonseca seemed built for the modern game. At 6’2”, he’s tall enough to make his serve a weapon. More important in this serve-plus-one era, he has the plus-one, in the form of a top-tier attacking forehand. It didn’t hurt that, even as a rookie, he also had the mental stamina to stay in long, see-saw matches, and a showman’s sense of how and when to get the crowd involved. It also doesn’t hurt that, in his fellow Brazilians, he has some of the most festively enthusiastic sports fans in the world.

Then, after a magical, five-month samba ride, the reality of the tour grind began to set in. With the shift to clay in April, the Fonseca train slowed and the music quieted. From Madrid through the US Open, he went 9-10 and has made just one round of 16. The green-and-gold were out in force at the US Open, but Fonseca was no match for Tomas Machac in a straight-set second-round loss.

Throughout, Fonseca has emphasized that at this stage of his career, there’s a lesson to be learned in every match, win or lose. He has learned that, when it comes to concentration and mental endurance, the majors really are a different animal.

“When you go to a Grand Slam and play, the players play differently,” he said after a losing in the third round at Wimbledon. “They’re much more focused. It’s a five-set match, and everything can happen. You can have two sets up and then you can still lose the match. So you need to stay focused all the time.”

He’s also learned that having fans can be a double-edged sword.

“Sometimes it’s going to be pressure,” he said this summer. “They’re going to put expectations like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be the next, I don’t know, Sinner or next Guga,’ whatever you think. I’m just going to be me. Some people understand that. Some people is going to be there even if I lose or even if I won.”

“There’s going to be good parts and there's going to be bad parts. It just depends how…you be mature and understand how they can help you.”

Fonseca seems to have realized some of the upsides and downsides of life on tour, and that it’s entirely up to the player how he handles them.

“I’m young and doing great, but to reach my dream, I need to focus on my routine, my day by day, so I try to focus a lot on what I need to do with my team and my family,” Fonseca told the ATP’s website earlier this year.

After a few down months, Fonseca had a big up this weekend, when he went 2-0 in Brazil’s Davis Cup tie with Greece. That included what may have been his most satisfying win of the season. In the fourth rubber, with Novak Djokovic in the audience, he came from 3-5 down in the third against Stefanos Tsitsipas to clinch the tie on the road. During the match, the Greek crowd booed Fonseca; the 19-year-old responded, Djokovic-style, by goading them to do it louder.

Success in Davis Cup, as Djokovic himself knows, can help launch a young player to new heights. And so can Fonseca’s next event, this weekend’s Laver Cup in San Francisco. In 2022, Felix Auger-Aliassime led Team World to its first victory, and went on to win three straight indoor titles that fall. In 2023, Frances Tiafoe did the same thing, then broke into the Top 10 and nearly made the US Open final the following year.

Can Fonseca make a difference for Team World in his Laver Cup debut? The weekend will, if nothing else, give him a chance to test himself against the elite. He has never faced any of Team Europe’s top four: Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Holger Rune, or Casper Ruud.

📲 🖥️ Watch the 2025 Laver Cup beginning Friday, September 19, on the Tennis Channel app

Fonseca is probably not going to be a shooting star the way Alcaraz was. For all of the Brazilian’s skills and assets, he’s not in another athletic stratosphere, the way the Spaniard is. Maybe he can learn more form Sinner’s slightly slower ascent. The Italian always had the tools, but he did whatever he had to do—fire coaches, alter his service motion, up his return game—to fix what wasn’t perfect.

In the end, Fonseca can also take heart from what he has already accomplished. At 18, Alcaraz was ranked 32nd; Fonseca is now ranked 42nd. Not everyone can be No. 1 before their teen years are over, and that’s OK.