Joao Fonseca Finally Finding Feet After Tough First Year On Tour

Joao Fonseca won the biggest title of his career to date at the Swiss Indoors, showing that at the end of a long and often arduous first full season the brilliant Brazilian teenager (he is still only 19) is finally coming to terms with life on tour. The impressive maturity that he showed in beating Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, allied to the impressive forehand that is already among the best in men’s tennis, suggests that less than a year on from his 2024 Next Gen Finals win he will soon be ready to compete for Masters and even Major titles.

An Impressive Run In Basel

What was most impressive about Fonseca’s run to the title in Basel was the quality of the opponents that he overcame throughout the week, which collectively constituted his best performance on tour so far. In the first round, he overcame the defending champion, France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, narrowly edging the first set on a tie-break (8-6) before finally breaking the Frenchman’s truly gigantic serve in the second set to claim that 6-3.

Fonseca was undeniably fortunate in the second round to benefit from a walkover after Jakub Mensik was unable to compete. However, he made the most of that good fortune by winning his quarterfinal against Denis Shapovalov (after the Canadian had retired with Fonseca 4-1 up in the third) and his semifinal against Jaume Munar in straight sets (7-6 7-5). And in the final against Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, it was as if the older Spaniard was the teenage tyro, as he was powerless to stop his record of losing in ATP finals from extending to five. If Davidovich Fokina was overcome by the angst he seems unable to overcome in finals, Fonseca was perfectly poised and self-composed, closing the match out in straight sets 6-3 6-4.

Afterwards, the Brazilian youngster was able to celebrate the biggest title of his career so far with his parents, who at the last minute had chosen to fly to Basel, rather than Paris, where the final Masters event of the year will be held this week. Fonseca seemed almost as surprised to see them as he was delighted, saying after the match: “It is crazy. My parents just got here from Brazil. They were going to Paris, but changed their flights and came here one hour before the match. It is just amazing to have them here for the biggest title of my career.”

Basel and Buenos Aires Bookend Fonseca’s Season With Titles

As a 500 event, Basel was undoubtedly Fonseca’s biggest win on the ATP Tour, but it was not his first, as he had won the 250 event in Buenos Aires in February. What was particularly notable about that triumph was that the young Brazilian had achieved it by beating three Argentinian players en route, including Francisco Cerúndolo in the final. To have overcome so many home players at a tournament, in such a hostile environment (especially for a Brazilian sportsperson in Argentina, given the rivalry between the two countries in all sports), was a testament to his incredible maturity, despite his young age.

That maturity, of course, had already been evident at the Next Gen Finals in Jeddah last December, when Fonseca had won the title, and in his breakthrough Major performance just over a month later when he defeated Andrey Rublev, the ninth seed, in the first round of the Australian Open. It seemed that he was set to carry his Next Gen Finals form right onto the ATP Tour, in the manner of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz before him.

In retrospect, however, it is perhaps not so surprising that Fonseca was unable to keep sweeping all before him as the season wore on. Two other young players who reached the 2024 Next Gen Finals, Learner Tien and Jakub Mensik, also achieved victories over top 10 players in Melbourne, but then also seemed to run out of gas as the season wore on.

That was because the 2024 Next Gen Finals had taken place much later than they ever had done before (in the third week of December) and as I wrote at the time that effectively meant that the Next Gen Finalists would have no off-season at all between 2024 and 2025. If initially they excelled in 2025, culminating in Mensik’s victory in Miami in March, it was also perhaps inevitable that they tailed off a little as the season wore on. And it is in that context that Fonseca’s mid-season slump should be seen.

He was unable to repeat his Melbourne fireworks at any of the other Majors, going no further than the third round in any of the four Slams this year, and on occasion even suffered extremely one-sided defeats to top players, perhaps most notably to Jack Draper at Indian Wells in March.

Perhaps Fonseca’s First Season Is Being Judged Too Harshly

Of course, it is perfectly possible to argue that Fonseca has enjoyed a truly spectacular first full season on tour, with his Basel win taking him to #24 in the live Pepperstone ATP Rankings ahead of the Paris Masters, which he will go into full of confidence after his victory in Switzerland. By almost any measure, to have risen within a year to just outside the world’s top 20 is a formidable feat.

It is only by the very highest standard or measure that Fonseca has fallen short this year, and that is the standard or measure set by Alcaraz and Sinner, two previous Next Gen champions (in 2021 and 2019 respectively) who almost immediately translated their Next Gen triumphs into major moves up the world rankings and even into prolonged runs at Majors.

Both Alcaraz and Sinner reached the last eight of a Grand Slam either just before they won the Next Gen Finals (in the case of Alcaraz at the US Open in 2021) or within a year of winning it (in the case of Sinner at the French Open in 2020).

It is precisely because Sinner and Alcaraz have effectively established a duopoly at the top of the men’s game, arguably becoming more dominant over the rest of the tour than even The Big Three at their peak (an impression that was further reinforced by Sinner coming from a set behind to beat World #3 Alexander Zverev in the Vienna final), that there is a virtual clamour for a “Third Man” to emerge and challenge their stranglehold on the sport’s biggest prizes.

For the last few years, the most likely “Third Man” to emerge alongside Alcaraz and Sinner has probably been Holger Rune, given the Dane’s own preternatural talent. However, Rune has consistently failed to prove that he can match the new “Huge Two” and having suffered a genuine horror injury when he ruptured his Achilles tendon in Stockholm last week it will be a long time before he will get another chance to do so.

In the prolonged absence of Rune, there are several other players who are capable of challenging Sinner and Alcaraz at the top of men’s tennis, notably Draper and Ben Shelton, who are amongst the most gifted and hardest hitting young players. However, perhaps in the longer term it will be Fonseca who emerges as their most consistent challenger. He already has a world-class forehand to match theirs and if he can develop the rest of his game to match it, then as early as in 2026 he could be making major progress at the Majors.