A word on João Fonseca and Father Power

May 30, 2026

It was the handsome Brazilian with the tight curls- Andre Sa that first put me onto the Carioca João Fonseca, it had to have been 2023 at the French. Thiago Seyboth Wild had come through qualies and upset Daniil Medvedev. Andre, the 2002 surprise Wimbledon quarterfinalist had begun working for Tennis Australia- pulling players to the United Cup, organizing player cooperation for The Summer Down Under, that sort of thing- a job he maintains today. “Unreal technique, huuuuge forehand”, Sa said in that sing-songy Brazilian accent. 

He told me about this bigtime kid, and along with the Italian Federico “Pali” Cina I started to track him. I saw him at all the junior majors; He won the 2023 US Open boys event, beating Learner Tien. But truthfully I never saw the carbonation all these bigtime players possess. 

I learned that he was a silver spoon kid, the dad is a bigtime hedge fund manager - and he seemed to be on the Team 8 /Jorge Paulo Lehmann/Marc Lehmann program. The  ON endorsement, the XP patch is indicative of a massive deal with the Brazilian investment company. When I inquired about my observations I was told no agent, the dad was managing the kid. 

“This kid might be soft”, I thought to myself. 

He took advantage of some wildcards and started climbing the rankings in ‘24,  qualified at the Aussie in 2025 and then went ahead and routined Andrei Rublev- but hitting absolute haymaker laser beam forehands, the sheer power of which takes your breath away. Clean, wicked, violent. Word underneath the stadium was Rublev had been sick, but it didn’t matter- Fonseca, with the support of every Brazilian on the planet had arrived.  But he didn’t have that Father Power-that baked in strength a grown man possesses. The kind of power you feel when you’re a kid and try to wrestle with your dad. Or when you have a fight broken up by a  grown man and realize you have no shot at resisting. That sorta power. 

When he played Lorenzo Sonego in rd 2 the  chants, JOOOO-OWWW FON- SAY-KA  had begun, the flags, the futbol jerseys, the beautiful Brazilian girls hitting the samba- all of it was there on the 1573 Arena. He didn’t win but it didn’t matter.

A couple months later he played Jack Draper 1st on Court 4 in Indian Wells- one of the great scheduling mistakes in modern history. It seems  like he could filled Maracana. He was like a wild dog in that match- couldn’t get the power under control, and overcooked a million forehands. 

The explosiveness was uncanny. But he was still a kid. 

He looked like a different person this past December in Miami, where he played an exo with The Vamos. Skin less oily, shoulders and legs fuller. Chiseled. Big.

A year after the Draper match in the desert , almost to the day, I was courtside on Court 1 in the Indian Wells Garden where Joao absolutely destroyed Tommy Paul in what I declared at the time a statement match. Controlled, patient violence. In that match I thought he had found a different gear on the backhand as well. 

Yesterday on Chatrier we saw it in full effect, that mix of calm, cool, charismatic, nuclear, determined, pumped, stoical -all of it. When he banged those three  aces to close the show one thing was certain- João Fonseca had gotten his Father Power.