SÃO PAULO – Roberta Fonseca radiates happiness. She can’t contain her joy as she watches her son hold the most important trophy of his young career. While they take the family photo on court, she kisses her child Joao.
Joao Fonseca laughs in embarrassment and pulls away. Stop, stop, don’t do that, Mum. His father, Christiano, standing to his left holding the Brazilian flag, smiles at the typical reaction of a young man who is no longer a little boy.
At 19, Fonseca is not the new kid on the block anymore.
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The tennis player won the ATP 500 in Basel, an event with conditions far removed from the slow outdoor clay courts that best suit South American players.
Fonseca, who woke up on Monday inside the top 30 of the rankings after defeating Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 6-3, 6-4 in the final, showed that the criticism he faced during the year was nothing but nonsense.
Hasty and baseless comments, since his inconsistency in 2025 is a normal part of the development of a still-maturing player experiencing his first full season on the ATP Tour.
Thus, his success in Switzerland came as a confirmation of his potential.
As the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo highlighted, it is the biggest title in Brazilian men’s tennis since Gustavo Kuerten won the Masters Series in Cincinnati in 2001.
A crucial step on a path that received a major boost when he won the ATP in Buenos Aires in February, defeating four Argentine players.
That achievement, even if it was “only” a 250-level event, was a remarkable feat for an 18-year-old, considering the hostile atmosphere a Brazilian faces on the Court Central Guillermo Vilas at the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club when his opponent is a local.
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“You’ll be the next Nole, the one who beats Carlos and Jannik, for sure,” predicted Davidovich during the trophy ceremony.
Will history repeat itself? Could Fonseca be that third guest at the table where Alcaraz and Sinner now dine, just as Djokovic once broke into the Federer–Nadal duopoly?
The Brazilian still has plenty of work ahead, but one thing is certain: as a teenager, he already proved he can handle a hostile crowd, perform well in unfavourable conditions, and hold his own against top-10 opponents at Grand Slams.
And that’s no small thing.
“It’s perfectly normal for excellent tennis players to have bad weeks and/or perform below expectations. No one should think Fonseca will be unbeatable tournament after tournament,” warns journalist Alexandre Cossenza in UOL.
But as the headline of his Saque e Voleio column in the Brazilian online outlet published this Sunday, what Fonseca achieved in Basel is “a grown-man’s title”.
Are more proofs still needed?
He must win more matches when he’s not playing well, make a statement with a strong Grand Slam run, or shine at a Masters 1000 as his generational rival Jakub Mensik has already done.
It also remains to be seen how much he can challenge Sinner and Alcaraz — his role models, as he told CLAY in an interview — with whom he has never played in official matches.
But it has already become clear that he is not a media-hyped player, nor one promoted by the ATP just for being charismatic or coming from a big country with a huge fan base, as his critics claim.
Fonseca is already a grown man.
The best teenager in the world, blushing as his proud mother kisses him on the cheek, while he holds the heavy trophy in Roger Federer’s homeland.
