Joao Fonseca has a lot of people talking. The 18-year-old tennis player is just off of a high-profile cotillion at the Australian Open, where he beat the number nine seed Andrey Rublev in the first round before falling in the second to the 55th-ranked Lorenzo Sonego–and fans are buzzing. The coach and commentator Brad Gilbert wrote on X that “Fonseca’s level for 18 let alone any age is simply off the charts… I said last month [he] would finish top 25. Now seeing year end championships.” Fonseca’s own Instagram audience went up by over 450,000 followers during the past two weeks. He’s now slotted at 99 in men’s tennis’s live rankings. It’s all happening very quickly.
But, he says, he’s managing. “I was born with this gift of being calm,” he tells me from his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, having flown back from Oz.
While he’s now had a taste of the global limelight, Fonseca’s emergence isn’t out of the blue. In late 2024, he won the Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. That tournament, which is for professionals aged 20 and under, has also seen victors such as Sinner and Alcaraz. In 2023, Fonseca clinched the US Open junior title. He also has two Challenger Tour titles, one from Lexington, Kentucky in 2024 and one from Canberra, Australia—just a week ahead of the AO. His fighter-jet forehand, lethal serve and lithe build (he’s 6’1’’) were all on tennis-watchers’ radars ahead of Melbourne.
“My idol was always Roger Federer,” Fonseca said in Australia. “When I was younger, I even tried the one-handed backhand. For a week.” (Federer famously employed a one-handed backhand–a majority of players use two hands.)
It’s said that Fonseca’s abilities were apparent from a very young age. Around two or three, his father’s yoga instructor reportedly noticed the toddler’s advanced reflex and coordination skills. Fonseca’s mother told the New York Times in 2024 that her son excelled, really, in all of his athletic pursuits when he was growing up, including soccer, swimming and jiu-jitsu. He is mild-mannered otherwise, but a tenacious, raw sporting aptitude seems to course through Fonseca’s veins. So too, it seems, does a preternatural coolness.
“For me, tennis is one of the most difficult sports that exists,” he tells me. “I love that it’s complex. It requires a lot of technique, but also a distinguished mental strength.”
Against Rublev, that “mental strength” looked Kevlar-thick. At pressure points, Fonseca exploded through the ball with what he called “good strikes,” or varied it up with featherlight dropshots. No doubts, no hesitation, and pretty effective dominance. Yet in round two against Sonego (and with mounting hype), a bit of anxiety understandably caught up with him: “To be honest, I did get nervous,” he said in Australia.
“I meditate before every match to keep myself calm,” he says in our conversation. “But I think it’s very much my thing as well. I am a calm person.” He adds that he does “around 25 to 30 minutes” of breathing and meditation each day, too.
Time will tell if Fonseca ascends to the pantheon of Brazil’s sporting greats—the country has a vast athletic legacy, from Rebeca Andrade’s incredible gymnastics career to the futebol legends Pelé and Neymar. Fonseca does note that tennis is becoming more prominent nationally. “Brazilian tennis is definitely growing a lot,” he says. “We have many up and coming young players that are doing well. I can mention Guto Miguel, Victoria Barros and Nauhany Silva. They’re doing extremely well. Historically, South American players perform better on clay courts, but I think that’s changing.”
“Brazilians are increasingly playing more and more on hard courts and in an aggressive manner,” he continues. Then, with perhaps a hint of warning, he says: “I myself like to be aggressive.”
