Africa, poverty and used rackets: the incredible story of Frances Tiafoe, Tabilo’s rival in Indian Wells

Starting a path in tennis is not easy. Despite its planetary massiveness, the white sport continues to be a very expensive discipline, especially at the junior level, where the profits are minimal and the expenses very high. It’s not just rackets, t-shirts or sneakers. There are also hours of training in private clubs and transfers of hundreds of kilometers to play events where you can be eliminated after a single match.

All of this makes Frances Tiafoe’s story (January 20, 1998) one of the most special on the circuit. An escape into a world where very few have managed to overcome everything that he and his family have had to go through. Because the current 16th in the world, and rival of Alejandro Tabilo today , he is unprofessional just because of his efforts. Her parents also appear on the scene, who were born in Sierra Leone but traveled to the United States to turn their lives around.

And with the passage of time on paper, they succeeded. They left Africa in the mid-1990s to escape a bloody civil war that ended up claiming more than 50,000 lives and two million Sierra Leonean refugees. Among them, the parents of the Delray Beach champion in 2018.

His father was working in the diamond mines when he decided to flee a country mired in poverty and destruction. His mother, on the other hand, had the privilege of being selected for the Green Card Lottery (officially called the Diversity Immigrant Visa) which issues United States permanent resident passports to people from countries with low immigration rates.

Once settled in North America, they joined their paths and began a story of what chance brought to tennis. His father worked as a laborer in the construction of the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC), a private venue in College Park, Maryland . The effort he made was such that the owners of the place offered him to stay on as janitor.

And there everything is connected. He and his wife concluded that Tiafoe and his twin brother would be better off in such an environment than in their one-bedroom apartment in Hyattsville, so they asked the landlords if they could arrange a small, free office, with a single window, into a room for their children to sleep in. They were only two years old.

“I slept on folding tables in the office. This is where my adventure began. I thought to myself, how would this story end? I saw tennis as something that could take me somewhere else. I thought, “Can you imagine if this is going well? It would be amazing. I would like this story to serve as an inspiration to others. You don’t have to start from the lower rungs to make it big. If you want something in life, go for it. “, recalled the American tennis player to The Guardian about these first memories in the center where he spent most of his life as a child and teenager.

A period during which he had to learn to live with children who had a life totally different from his. Young people who had the best racquets, the best coaches and parents with lots of money. “I didn’t feel sad because I knew I had to be grateful for what I had. Even if it was hard, because they were looking at the clothes you were wearing, which weren’t the best. My dad used to say, “Listen, you can have the last laugh. You have a fantastic opportunity. They have drivers. But are they yours? No, because they are already born with it. you can earn yours “, he confessed in the same way in the interview with the british media.

He learned to play on his own, watching lessons given by club members. He used used racquets, which were thrown away by young center promises, until he got his first endorsement when he exploded in junior tournaments.

In fact, the first to notice it was Micha Kuznetsov, a trainer from Pennsylvania who had traveled to Maryland to find new talent. “He was taller than most kids his age and more athletic. When he was 10, he started playing with boys over 12, and then I knew that one day I could turn professional.” commented the strategist who quickly propelled him to the fore in the United States.

Two years after the start of the relationship, he won the U-14 World Championship in France, while a season later, with At 15, he becomes the youngest player to win the famous Orange Bowl in Florida . At 17, he became the youngest American to make the Roland Garros main draw since Chang in 1989, and when he was just 20, he won his first (and so far only ) ATP title.

After that explosive start, Tiafoe felt the pressure of expectations firsthand. He failed to maintain the momentum of his early years and lost relevance within the circuit. This until 2020.The pandemic was probably the best thing that happened to me in my career, if we are to be honest. I was in a dark place before the pandemic. I looked at myself in the mirror and asked, ‘Why are you here? What are the things you need to change and what are the things you need to continue to build on? “It helped me a lot. There were a lot of deep conversations.” he confessed to the ATP months after the circuit was reactivated.

Thus his career has experienced a reactivation which has found its best version in the last twelve months. In 2022, he signed the knockout stages of the Masters 1000 in Miami, the quarter-finals of the Masters 1000 in Paris-Bercy, the knockout rounds of Wimbledon and semi-finals at the US Open , a tournament where he eliminated Rafael Nadal in the round of 16. Already in early 2023, he managed to reach the third round of the Australian Open and climb to 14th place in the ATP rankings, his best all-time record.

Now on the horizon appears Alejandro Tabilo. The Chilean will face Tiafoe in the round of 16 in Indian Wells, in what is for both the best performance they have put together in the event which takes place in the Californian desert. A duel where there will be a full stadium and where the locals will support one of the most charismatic players of their country. Opposite will be another tennis player who knows what it’s like to come from abroad and have another culture that you care about.

Tiafoe has never denied her African past. He even admits that the trip he made at the age of eight to his parents’ homeland changed him forever. “Misery is mad there. You see it on TV and then you see it up close and it’s like, damn it. People were really hurting and there was very little hope. It made me realize that as an American citizen, I had opportunities and was able to do whatever I wanted.” commented a few years ago.

“It was good for us to understand that life is different in Africa. It’s humbling and it’s good that I was brought up as an African. When I came back to DC from Australia, a bunch of little kids were talking about it. I felt that I had made a difference. I inspired a child to say, “I want to be like Frances when I grow up. “, another of his reflections. A guy with his feet on the ground and his chest high. Tabilo’s rival on a special day for Chilean tennis.