Frances Tiafoe
Frances Tiafoe (nickname Big Foe) is a top American professional tennis player, who has an incredible and inspirational life story. His life story shows that as long as you love something, believe in yourself and work hard you will get what you want.
Frances Tiafoe was born on January 20,1998. He is a twin, and his brother’s name is Franklin. Their parents were immigrants from Sierra Leone and they lived in Hyattsville Maryland. Constant Tiafoe, Frances and Franklin Tiafoe´s father helped build the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) and then became its custodian. Both boys would stay with him at the Center and they slept on massage tables in a storage room. Frances’ mother worked night shifts as a nurse. He would go to his mom’s apartment on the weekends or other days that she was off. Frances was able to play at the Center for free because his dad worked there. He would use tennis racquets that he found laying around. He would watch the lessons and then he would go to the back wall of the facility to practice by himself and completely mimic and copy what he saw in the lessons. He always wore the same worn Pikachu shirt and khaki pants when he was playing tennis and he wore shoes that did not fit him so the kids at the tennis center made fun of him. Frances and his brother were envious of what everyone else had. Although, after he went to a wedding back in Sierra Leone with his mother and brother when he was eight years old, he saw that the kids that lived there had even less than he did. This made him appreciate what he had even though it was not a lot.
In late 2006 Mikhail Kouznetsov, a new tennis coach at JTCC, discovered Frances. When Mikhail went to the tennis center in the morning Frances was there practicing and when Mikhail left for the evening Frances was there practicing. Mikhail thought here was a kid he could teach and he started coaching him for free. Three months later Frances entered his first tournament. He defeated all of the kids in his age group and the kids older than his age group. This made Mikhail realize that Tiafoe was going to become a professional.
Frances was 12 years old when he told his parents that he wanted to become a tennis professional. He was very committed and trained hard. He won an International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament called the Orange Bowl at the age of 15. Frances was on the list of players who also won which included Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Ivan Ledl, Jim Courier, John Mcenroe, Bjorn Borg. He won the Easter Bowl one year later so then became number two in the ITF circuit and he also became the first American player to win both the Orange Bowl and the Easter Bowl. He turned pro in 2015.
After he became pro, Frances made slow progress over many years. He won his first ATP tour title in 2018 and made it to an Australian Open quarter final (where he lost to Rafael Nadal) in 2019. Frances thinks that his success was slow earlier in his career because he was distracted by so much attention he was getting. Once that attention was less, he had better success leading up to the 2022 US Open.
Frances made history at the 2022 US Open. Frances won his first three rounds of the US open pretty easily. I knew he would go far in the tournament when he defeated Rafael Nadal in the fourth round. Tiafoe defeated Nadal 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. So Frances advanced to the quarterfinals where he played an old friend named Andrey Rublev. Tiafoe defeated Rublev in straight sets 77-63 ,77-60, 6-4. Tiafoe changed his shirt a lot during that match, at the end of the match he had about 8 shirts in a pile right next to his area. When you watch Tiafoe play, it is always a fun experience because he fires up the crowd. Then in the semifinals against Carlos Alcaraz, Tiafoe got off to a great start by winning the first set 78-66. But Alcaraz played some exceptional tennis so he won the next two sets (6-3 and 6-1). Tiafoe won the fourth set 77-65 but in the fifth set Tiafoe was making a lot of double faults when he was serving. I thought that he was nervous. Tiafoe lost that set 6-3 and the match. After the match he said to the crowd “I’m gonna come back and I will win this thing one day.”
Even though he lost in the semi final he made history at the US Open. He was the first Black man to reach the US Open Semifinals since Arthur Ashe went to the Semifinals in 1972. He also was the first American born after 1988 to beat one of the big three at a grand slam. The big three are Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal.
As of February 6, 2023 he is ranked 14 in the world. As he told reporters at Flushing Meadows in 2022: “Every time I win, I just want to inspire a bunch of people to just know that you can -- I mean, anything is possible. For me to do this and talk about how I feel about being in the US Open from my come-up is crazy. At the end of the day I love that because of Frances Tiafoe there are a lot of people of color playing tennis. That's obviously a goal for me. That's why I'm out here trying pretty hard.”
While he did not do as well at the Australian Open as I had hoped, let’s see how Frances Tiafoe does at the French Open. Don’t you think he is an inspiring person that we could all learn from?
