Joao Fonseca: Why French Open win over Novak Djokovic marks arrival of 19-year-old

"He's got the goods."

The words of Novak Djokovic at the 2025 Australian Open after an 18-year-old Joao Fonseca had stunned ninth seed Andrey Rublev on his Grand Slam debut.

As Friday afternoon gave way to Friday evening in Paris, Djokovic saw those "goods" first hand and lost.

The booming forehand, the teasing drop shots, and - the piece de resistance - a trio of nerveless aces in game 12 of the deciding set to first save a break point and then convert match point.

For the second match in a row, Brazilian teenager Fonseca fought back from two sets down to win. In round two, his opponent was world number 72 Dino Prizmic. In round three, a 24-time Grand Slam champion and third seed - who led 3-1 in the fifth set before Fonseca roared back to win an epic contest 4-6 4-6 6-3 7-5 7-5 in four hours and 53 minutes.

The first teenager to beat Djokovic at a major at the 19th attempt and a win which, coupled with the second-round exit of Jannik Sinner and absence of defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, means there will be a new Grand Slam champion crowned in 2026.

Fonseca, who briefly interrupted the applause on Court Philippe-Chatrier to say happy birthday to his mum sitting in his box, reflected on his astonishment at beating his "idol".

"I actually didn't believe I could win the match. I just played and enjoyed being in the court," Fonseca, the world number 30, said.

"I was just trying to hit the ball as fast as I could. Djokovic doesn't miss and we still think he's 20. At the end of the match, he was more fit than me. When the day was getting darker, I felt much slower.

"I just believed I could do aces, it was crazy - I felt like John Isner. I have never done that before. I am super happy that I could finish like this."

Fonseca has long been touted as the next big thing, first garnering attention when he followed in the footsteps of Sinner and Alcaraz to win the 2024 ATP Next Gen finals - the end-of-season showpiece for players under the age of 21 - before bursting into the spotlight with his victory over Rublev in Melbourne barely a month later.

He clinched his maiden ATP title on the clay courts of Buenos Aires in February 2025 before reaching the third round on his French Open debut, where he lost to Britain's Jack Draper. And wherever he went, a carnival of Brazilian flags followed.

Twelve months after making his bow in Paris as the world number 65, he returned as the 28th seed but, while there have been flashes of promise in that period - reaching the third round at Wimbledon, a second career title at last October's Swiss Indoors, and a quarter-final at the Monte-Carlo Masters - there was a sense he hadn't quite lived up to his precocious talent.

No more. At the sixth time of asking, Fonseca is through to the second week of a major.

He's gone where no teenager has gone before in beating Djokovic at a Grand Slam, and is only the sixth to do so at any ATP Tour-level event.

He is the first player since Philipp Kohlschreiber, in 2009, to knock Djokovic out before the quarter-finals at the French Open and the first to do so at any Slam since the 2024 US Open.

"Joao Fonseca has definitely announced himself now," Annabel Croft said on BBC Radio 5 Live. "He can proudly say he has lived up to the hype, because everyone was saying he hadn't done much since the hype.

"When all the Brazilians and South Americans were running to the courts to watch him play a couple of years ago, now we know why."

"It took time for him to find his feet, and the crowd was going to play such an important part if he could get them going, and it literally ended in fireworks," added former French Open semi-finalist Jo Konta on TNT Sports.

"It was exactly the situation Joao needed to bring out that level of tennis.

"He just played one of the biggest matches we've seen for some time."

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