Despite the frustrating defeat in the first round of the Open River, Brazilian tennis player João Fonseca has already reached comparable deeds to those of big names in the sport.
Upon reaching 68th place in the list of ATP (Association of Professional Tenns) after winning the ATP of Buenos Aires, the young Brazilian tennis player equaled the ranking that Italian Jannik Sinner, current number one, and Russian Marat Safin, first placed in the 2000s, reached his age – 18 years old and six months.
The survey of Sheet He considered the best brand achieved until this age by all the tennis players who have occupied the leadership of ATP since the 1990s, when the current format of ATP Tour competitions began.
Sinner, who recently received a three -month suspension for doping, won his first career title at age 17 when he won the Bergamo Challenger in Italy in 2019. In the same year, he won two more Challenger: Lexington, United States, and Ortisi tournaments in Italy.
Challenger tournaments are usually played by young career young people in the professional circuit, in search of the first points for the ranking. Then there are ATP level tournaments, divided into the 250, 500 and Masters 1000 categories, regarding the number of points distributed to the champion. At the top of the hierarchy are the four Grand Slams – Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open – who give 2,000 points to the champion.
Sinner also took the Next Gen ATP Finance trophy, which brings together the eight best tennis players up to 20, at 18 and two months. He is the youngest to win the tournament, which began in 2017, and became number one in June 2024 at the age of 22 after raised the Australian Open trophy earlier this year.
Fonseca began to attract attention within the professional circuit by beating Next Gen at the end of 2024, at 18 and four months, days before taking Challenger de Canberra, Australia.
Following, in his first participation in a Grand Slam, he defeated the then nine number of the world, Russian Andrei Rublev for 3 sets to 0 in Australian Open.
With the title in Argentina, he became the tenth younger tennis player in history in the era open to win an ATP level title. The lead is from Australian Lleyton Hewitt, who won the Adelaide tournament at 16 and ten months.
Following, with the early fall in the clay of the Jockey Club, Fonseca lost ten positions in the ATP ranking, falling to 78th position.
Safin, who had great rivalry inside the courts with Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten, Guga, won the first title at the age of 17, with the conquest of the Challenger de Espinho in Portugal.
At 18, the Russian had as the greatest achievements to advance to the eighth phase of Roland Garros – tuning the then champion Guga in the second round – and at US Open. He was eliminated by the tennis players of Casa Cédric Pioline and Pete Sampras, respectively.
Safin reached the number one post in the year 2000, at the age of 20, carrying the US Open title in his luggage, defeating Sampras in the end of that year, in addition to the Paris and Toronto Masters.
In total, ten tennis players who have already held the number one post in the world did not reach, up to 18 and a half, a position as high as that of Fonseca this month.
The Serbian Novak Djokovic, the Olympic champion and record holder of Grand Slam titles, with 24 top -class tournaments, is the closest to the list, the world’s 75th at 18 and six months.
At the time, Djokovic had the greatest career achievements of his Challengers (from Budapest, Hungary, Aachen, Germany, and San Remo, Italy).
Russian Danil Medvedev, who reached the top in 2022 at the age of 26, was not even in the ranking at this age.
Guga, in turn, was the 371st in the world. His best result so far had been the quarterfinals of the Challenger of São Luís, Maranhão.
In November 1996, at the age of 20, he won the first career title (Challenger of Campinas). The following year, he surprised the world when, occupying the 66th ranking post, won Roland Garros.
Only Brazilian to date to reach the top of ATP ranking in Simples, Guga arrived in December 2000, at 24, after the Masters Cup title in Lisbon.
There are also ten other tennis players who were leaders of the ranking throughout their career who had already surpassed the ranking of Fonseca until the current age of the Brazilian. The first in front of you is Scottish Andy Murray, who reached the post of 66th.
“I can’t wait for the first game between Fonseca and [Carlos] Alcaraz, “said Murray, quoting the 21 -year -old Spaniard who is the youngest in history to reach the ranking leadership at the age of 19 and four months in 2022.
“The way he played his first Grand Slam match against his first Top 10 opponent is amazing,” Alcaraz said after Fonseca’s victory against Rublev in Australia. “The way he approached the game, how it managed everything, the nerves, the game in general, was fantastic,” added the current number three in the ranking. He was the 35th at the age of Fonseca.
German Boris Becker and American Andre Agassi reached the world’s number four post at 18 and six months.
Becker had already won Wimbledon’s Grand Slam in 1985 – he is, to this day, the youngest champion of the traditional grass tournament at 17 and seven months.
Agassi, who won the first title in Itaparica at the age of 17, in Bahia, beating Brazilian Luiz Mattar in the final, he enabled the following year six ATP tournament achievements, and advances to the US Open semifinals, being eliminated by Ivan Lendl.
“I’m just an 18 -year -old boy, trying to improve my game and reach my dream. I know some matches are difficult and that nervousness will appear,” Fonseca said after defeat to Frenchman Ugo Humbert for the Davis Cup.
