Frances Tiafoe calls time on 2025 season

Frances Tiafoe has called time on his 2025 season bringing to a close a disappointing year for the American. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way with Tiafoe looking primed to re-establish himself at the top of the game and break back into the top 10. That hasn’t come close to panning out for the American, however.

Tiafoe had a really poor start to the season, failing to win consecutive matches until April and the Houston Open. In the first four months, he failed to win two matches at the same event, despite playing at six different events. It was a trend that was troubling but would continue for most of 2025.

Houston was one of the few bright spots though, as Tiafoe managed to make the final, though not win the trophy as Jenson Brooksby was better on the big day. The European clay season was poor overall, but he did manage to win some matches in Madrid and in Paris. In fact, it was on the big stage at Roland Garros that he finally started playing like himself,  making the quarterfinal as a result and giving Lorenzo Musetti a fight in a four-set defeat. The grass season was largely unremarkable as well, though the expectations weren’t the highest either.

The North American hard court swing has historically been a successful stretch for Tiafoe and looked like a good opportunity for him to get back on track. That didn’t happen, even though he did play better during that time compared to previous months. In the end, however, the US Open ended with a deeply frustratining loss against Jan-Lennard Struff. But that was largely the problem for him. He couldn’t win the matches that he should have won in 2025. Since the US Open, it’s been two easy losses in the Davis Cup and early exits in Tokyo and Shanghai, where he won the first sets of the matches but then completely collapsed.

It became evident in these matches that Tiafoe was completely out of it mentally because the fight stopped the moment the match didn’t go his way. His ranking is already matching the lowest he has been ranked in the last three years. He will drop a bit further, but not by much, as he only defends about 110 points in the rest of the season, which is partly why he elected to stop. There wasn’t anything major to defend or any major objectives to achieve, and ultimately he has been mentally out of it for a while. The body language in his recent matches was terrible, and you could see he lost the joy.

Rest and a reset are much needed, and Tiafoe opted for that. Time will tell whether it was the right move, but with the way things have looked recently, it certainly looked like the right move, and it’s been proven to work in the past for other players.