Frances Tiafoe’s Life Goes Technicolor

MELBOURNE, Australia Let’s start with the outfit, the abstract-art-meets-silk-summer-pajamas-meets-Nike-tennis outfit worn by Frances Tiafoe at the Australian Open.

“They just told me it was going to be outward and sleeveless, and I was like, cool,” Tiafoe said earlier this week after winning his first match in a rather non-traditional tennis tournament. And a lot of colors and mixing function. They said if anyone can pull this off it’s me so I said cool let’s do it.

There is also Calvin Klein briefs. And he has developed into the de facto alpha dog of American tennis, even as several players have ranked higher and lasted longer or even won major tournaments. That was especially evident earlier this month when he helped lead the United States to victory in the inaugural United Cup, a rare mixed team event.

Are you locked out? he asked his teammates before every match in that competition. Now it’s their catchphrase, a word they say to each other as they walk the corridors and squares of Melbourne Park before their matches, riding a wave of American success that seems to grow with each Grand Slam.

In the months following the US Open, Tiafoe bumped fists with the likes of LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony and poked fun at top names in fashion. His new agents at IMG, a sports and entertainment conglomerate that only signs athletes it considers potential marketing juggernauts, have helped, but mostly a few magical hours in September at the US Open.

“That day definitely changed my life,” Tiafoe said Wednesday after plowing into the third set with a straight sets win over Shang Juncheng, a 17-year-old Chinese boy with a seemingly bright future.

That day was Sept. 5, when Tiafoe upset Rafael Nadal at the US Open, becoming the first American man to beat Nadal at a Grand Slam in nearly two decades. Four days later, with former first lady Michelle Obama, A-list celebrities and more than 20,000 fans cheering him on at Arthur Ashe Stadium, he lost a five-set thriller to eventual champion and world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz. 1.

Nothing has been the same since for the man known as Big Foe, who finished 16th in this tournament.

“You get so close to doing something so special and to see everything that happened after that,” Tiafoe said Wednesday. I want more of those moments and better.

On his 25th birthday on Friday, Tiafoe, who plays Russian Karen Khachanov, has been, if not exactly here, then somewhere like this before. Three years ago, he reached the quarterfinals of this tournament, and his ranking soon rose to 29th in the world. He figured his tennis career would just continue the upward trajectory that began when he picked up a racket as a young child at a club where his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, was a maintenance worker, and started hitting balls into the wall.

He quickly caught the attention of tennis coaches and later the US Tennis Association, which helped fund his development during his teenage years. But that breakthrough at the 2019 Australian Open led to complacency rather than hunger. He trained and trained hard only when he felt like it, or skipped it altogether. He didn’t pay much attention to what he ate.

He lost more times than he won and fell out of the top 80.

Wayne Ferreira, a former South African professional who began coaching Tiafoe in 2020, said in September that Tiafoe may have suffered because everything happened so easily.

“I think I helped him because I played and went through the issues of relative talent and laziness,” Ferreira said in September. Eating was terrible in the beginning. The effort in training and on the field was not good enough. It took time to gradually get to where we are today.

Tiafoe said he is virtually unrecognizable from the person and player he was three years ago, who suddenly found himself playing challenger tournaments in the back roads of the sport.

You lose confidence, and then once you know that, people start figuring it out, he said. At that point he said, are you wondering: Where did it all go?

Now Tiafoe must figure out how to manage two seemingly conflicting forces in his personality. There’s the easy-going, laid-back playful electric smile and intense competitor who is desperate to fulfill the potential he and everyone around him knows he has.

Frances has always had her way, said Tommy Paul, who has trained and competed with Tiafoe since they were among the top 9-year-olds in the country. She is somewhere calm, but she is Frances. It’s different.

It is.

The Tiafoes field chair and its surroundings are usually a mixed mess of towels, water bottles, miles, tapes and other supplies. He works on his own schedule, which might help him get a watch sponsorship depending on the manufacturer’s point of view.

In September at the Laver Cup, where Tiafoe and Jack Sock played Nadal and Roger Federer in the Federers’ last competitive match, Tiafoe ran across the court to slap Nadal’s hand mid-game as Nadal hit a masterful goal. winner. After Team World won the Europeans, he showed up to a typically late press conference, where he took a bottle of water and a Budweiser from his jacket.

He was late again when the United States won the United Cup earlier this month in Sydney. Her teammates Taylor Fritz, Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys sat at the table, waiting and shaking their heads.

Oh Frances, Keys said, trying to hold back her laughter.

A random approach has its advantages. Pegula and Tiafoe bonded in that United Cup in a way that male and female players rarely do, warming each other up before each match, a routine they have continued during this tournament.

Pegula, ranked third in the world, said she and Tiafoe had a kind of yin-and-yang energy in the hours leading up to the race. He comes into the field as a bundle of nerves, especially if he is not hitting well. He comes out so happy, the biggest hype man ever, he said.

I’m a little more focused, which is what he needs, he added. He says he feels like the best player in the world when he beats me.

Tiafoe said that hitting with Pegula had given him the chance to soak up everything he could from someone who is playing the best tennis of his life.

You can learn from greatness, he said. You can learn from people who do things at a high level.

He knows his recent success has created higher expectations than ever. In his case, however, they have a different pressure. A player who goes toe-to-toe with the best players in the world with a disrespectful attitude, messy changing area, tendency to be late and eye-catching clothes is colorful. But do all of these things and lose in the first week and you’ll be seen as frivolous, sloppy, late and of questionable fashion sense. Nadal’s famous clam diggers only worked because he won armfuls of awards using them.

In an interview on Monday, Tiafoe said he was on a mission. Gone are the days when he was happy to get a fourth round pick. He wants to beat the best players in the world in the biggest stadiums and the most important tournaments.

If he can do that, his journey really is the stuff of Hollywood movies, and maybe someone will make him one someday.

But as Ferreira pointed out during the US Open, you only get movies if you do well.