João Fonseca, 18, won the Next Gen Finals this Sunday (22), a tournament contested by the eight best tennis players of the season aged up to 20, and repeated the mark of the Italian Jannik Sinner and the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, also winners of the competition at the age of 18 .
Sinner, number one in the ATP rankings (Association of Professional Tennis Players), won the Next Gen in 2019, and Alcaraz, third in the world, in 2021. The Next Gen Finals began in 2017, and João is the first Brazilian to win it .
João, the biggest promise in Brazilian tennis today, beat the North American Learner Tien, 19, by 3 sets to 1 (partials 2/4, 4/3, 4/0 and 4/2) in the final of the tournament, played in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, after an undefeated campaign.
“I’m very proud of myself,” he said in an interview after winning the title, acknowledging the difficulties at the start of the final. “I was very nervous before the match and I knew it would be very difficult. I’ve played against Learner — he’s a really cool guy and a great player — so I knew it would be very difficult mentally and physically. I had to endure it. Honestly, I don’t know like I did in the second set.”
“I wasn’t playing my best at the beginning, but after winning the second set, I think I was another João. I was a lot more aggressive, and I think he got a little more tense.”
The Brazilian was the last classified for the Next Gen, won the three matches of the qualifying phase and prevailed smoothly over the Frenchman Luca Van Assche, 20, in the semi-final.
This was João’s first full season on the professional circuit — the tennis player announced that he intended to participate in adult competitions after winning the US Open for youth, in September 2023, over Learner Tien.
This year, the Rio native reached the quarterfinals of the Rio Open and the ATP 250 in Bucharest, Romania, and won the Challenger in Lexington, in the United States. João started 2024 at 727th in the world rankings and reached 145th place on the eve of Next Gen, a jump of 582 positions.
The tournament offers US$150,000 (R$910,000) to all qualifiers, regardless of results, and rewards players for each match won. The prize for the final is US$153,000 (R$930,000), a value that increases to US$526,000 (R$3.2 million) if the champion remains undefeated in the competition. In total, Next Gen distributes US$2.05 million (R$12.5 million).
The Next Gen Finals champions
2024: João Fonseca (Brazil)
2023: Hamad Medjedovic (Serbia)
2022: Brandon Nakashima (United States)
2021: Carlos Alcaraz (Spain)
2019: Jannik Sinner (Italy)
2018: Stefanos Tsitsipas (Greece)
2017: Hyeon Chung (South Korea)
