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Joao Fonseca has become the first Brazilian male player to reach the fourth round of a major tournament since Thomaz Bellucci in 2011.
“He’s got the goods.”
These were the words of Novak Djokovic at the 2025 Australian Open after an 18-year-old Joao Fonseca stunned ninth seed Andrey Rublev on his Grand Slam debut.
As Friday afternoon turned into evening in Paris, Djokovic experienced those “goods” firsthand and ultimately succumbed to defeat.
Fonseca showcased his booming forehand, deceptive drop shots, and, crucially, a trio of clutch aces in the 12th game of the deciding set. These secured a break point save and then clinched the match.
For the second consecutive match, the Brazilian teenager rallied from a two-set deficit to secure victory. In the second round, he defeated world number 72 Dino Prizmic. In the third round, he overcame a 24-time Grand Slam champion and third seed, recovering from a 3-1 deficit in the fifth set to win an epic encounter 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 7-5 after four hours and 53 minutes.
Fonseca is the first teenager to defeat Djokovic at a major in 19 attempts. This victory, combined with Jannik Sinner’s second-round exit and the absence of defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, signals that a new Grand Slam champion will be crowned in 2026.
Fonseca, after briefly pausing the applause on Court Philippe-Chatrier to wish his mother in the stands a happy birthday, expressed his astonishment at defeating his “idol.”
“I actually didn’t believe I could win the match. I just played and enjoyed being in the court,” said Fonseca, the world number 30.
“I was just trying to hit the ball as fast as I could. Djokovic doesn’t miss, and we still think he’s 20. At the end of the match, he was more fit than me. When the day was getting darker, I felt much slower.
“I just believed I could do aces, it was crazy – I felt like John Isner. I have never done that before. I am super happy that I could finish like this.”
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Fonseca hit 22 winners in the final set, contrasting sharply with the 13 he managed in the first two sets.
Fonseca has been recognized as a rising star for some time, initially gaining attention by following in the footsteps of Sinner and Alcaraz to win the 2024 ATP Next Gen Finals—the season-ending event for players under 21. He then broke into the spotlight with his victory over Rublev in Melbourne just a month later.
He secured his first ATP title on the clay courts of Buenos Aires in February 2025 before reaching the third round of his French Open debut, where he was defeated by Britain’s Jack Draper. A wave of Brazilian flags followed him wherever he competed.
Returning to Paris a year after his debut, ranked as the 28th seed after entering as world number 65, there have been promising moments, including reaching the third round at Wimbledon, winning a second career title at last October’s Swiss Indoors, and reaching the quarter-finals at the Monte-Carlo Masters. However, a sense persisted that he had not fully realized his potential.
That perception has now shifted. On his sixth attempt, Fonseca has advanced to the second week of a major.
He’s achieved a feat no other teenager has managed by defeating Djokovic at a Grand Slam and is only the sixth to do so at any ATP Tour-level event.
Fonseca is the first player since Philipp Kohlschreiber in 2009 to eliminate Djokovic before the quarter-finals at the French Open, and the first to do so at any Grand Slam event since the 2024 US Open.
“Joao Fonseca has definitely announced himself now,” Annabel Croft said on BBC Radio 5 Live. “He can proudly say he has lived up to the hype, because everyone was saying he hadn’t done much since the hype.
“When all the Brazilians and South Americans were running to the courts to watch him play a couple of years ago, now we know why.”
“It took time for him to find his feet, and the crowd was going to play such an important part if he could get them going, and it literally ended in fireworks,” added former French Open semi-finalist Jo Konta on TNT Sports.
“It was exactly the situation Joao needed to bring out that level of tennis.
“He just played one of the biggest matches we’ve seen for some time.”
While Djokovic had more winners (70 to 68) and fewer unforced errors (39 to 47) than Fonseca, he was ultimately outlasted and outmaneuvered by the young Brazilian in the match’s decisive moments.
His trio of match-winning aces—one wide to save a break point and two down the T that left the teenager shaking his head in disbelief—will dominate the headlines, but it was his “blistering” forehand, which gave Konta “goosebumps,” that proved to be the difference-maker.
During portions of the third and fourth sets, he consistently hit the ball 40 mph faster than Djokovic on his groundstrokes, with his powerful striking overpowering the Serb from the back of the court.
He frequently opted to unleash outright winners, but also demonstrated tactical acumen by incorporating delicate drop shots—including three in the penultimate game—to exploit the space he had created on the court.
“I have never seen forehands clonked as hard as we saw Joao Fonseca’s hit today,” Croft remarked.
“The fact they were consistently hitting the corners and the lines – at one stage Djokovic was just laughing, like ‘how can this guy keep doing it and bringing it?’.”
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