Frances Tiafoes tennis is in a slump. At Wimbledon he comes alive

Follow live coverage of Wimbledon 2024 here.

WIMBLEDON Frances Tiafoe returns to tennis.

The wagging, the clenched fist and the stare; the widest you-know-what grin in the game; the energetic vibes that can draw any tennis crowd to their corner. After months on life support, it's back in full force, here on the grass of Wimbledon. The ball moves with laser-like forehands down the line and the mesmerizing spins that spin the balls across the court.

Tiafoe is here, really here. Here in a way he hasn’t been since the summer of 2023: the last time he believed tennis was his to take.

Since then, he’s been mostly lost and mostly miserable. Not many victories. Not many grins. Wisecracks few and far between. Certainly not the Tiafoe who took over New York City and the 2022 U.S. Open, who came within a set of the final and quickly became the favorite tennis son and brother of Michelle Obama and players across the NBA.

A week can change everything, is the ultimate tennis cliché, but Tiafoe could well experience it at Wimbledon this year, after beating Croatia’s Borna Coric in three mostly rapid sets on Wednesday. The victory was the kind of date he’s been looking forward to: a showdown with Carlos Alcaraz, likely on Centre Court on Friday, a rematch of their electric US Open semifinal duel that head-to-head summer two years ago.

Popcorn match, Tiafoe, 26, said before he beat Coric, looking forward to the Alcaraz match, using the carrot of his first Centre Court assignment as incentive. Perhaps one of the better matches to be played.

There he is. There's the guy Alexander Zverev likes to call Hollywood in the locker room.

---

Five weeks ago in Paris, that version of Tiafoe, or indeed anything approaching those days in 2022, seemed an eternity away. Back then, Tiafoe was walking around with the hood of his hoodie pulled low over his forehead, a loser in five of his previous six matches, ready to leave tennis on the red earth for another year.

Last year he finally made it into the top 10. Now he was lucky to still be in the top 30.

He kept telling himself he was one of the best players in the world, no matter the number next to his name. He just wasn’t sure he believed it, the way he fired his shots and hit balls off his frame. He could repeat it over and over and over again, but he needed a sign and it was up to him to create it.

Better tennis is ahead of me, Tiafoe said then. It will come.

Maybe, but when?

It turns out to be just in time, and perhaps when no one expected it. Down two sets in the first round on Monday against Matteo Arnaldi, a rising force and the best young Italian player not named Jannik Sinner, Tiafoe had every reason to call it quits and head home after a three-month absence, including a sprained ligament in his knee.

And then, for the first time in a long time, he said no.

This was Wimbledon, a tournament he loves. Enough self-pity. You’re a kid who grew up with nothing and played on the grass of the All England Club, he remembered. Maybe you could try to have a little fun while it lasted.

He started joking around with his team, coming into the net and giving his shots some more bite as he dug balls out of the corners. He didn't even think about actually coming back and winning. He had been down two sets 17 times before and never made it.

He won the third set, then the fourth, and before he knew it, his arms were in the air. The man he once knew came to life. A few hours later, he was walking the corridors of the All England Club in flip-flops and a purple T-shirt (no pristine white tracksuit for him), listening to Tim Hardaway Jr of the Dallas Mavericks tell him how he had watched the match in the gym, gotten excited and screamed at the screen.

I gotta go bro, Tiafoe told him. I'm walking into an interview, literally right now.

And then the old, free-spirited Tiafoe really started to come to the fore, the one who floats through life and tennis with his heart and thoughts on his sweatbands.

He said, laughing but not really joking, that he lost to some clowns.

That comment will no doubt go around the locker room. One of the so-called clowns, Marcos Giron, a compatriot and friend who easily defeated Tiafoe in Dallas in February, laughed it off as if Frances were Frances. Other players, particularly those still in the draw, such as Tomas Machac, Jack Draper and Juncheng Shang, may not be so forgiving.

“He has so much potential and he has shown it, as one of the top 10 players in the world,” Giron said on Tuesday after winning the second round match with Alexander Zverev. “But you have to prove yourself every day. The margins are small and you have to keep going.

That's where Tiafoe has been going wrong lately.

On Monday, he spoke about something eerily similar to what happened five years ago. That was the last time he shot up the rankings, when he burst onto the tour and found himself in the top 30 at 21. He thought it would always be that way.

Before he knew it, his ranking had drifted into the 80s. He had lost his focus. The same was true for the last year.

He took the game a little for granted, he said. He got a little too comfortable.

Rich sponsorship deals with Cadillac and Nike can do that. Tiafoe has lost more games than he has won this season, but there are still giant posters of him in London Underground stations. He knows better than anyone that the man on the poster has not been the man on the pitch, at least not recently.

---

Perhaps it is fortunate for Tiafoe that these two weeks on the grass at Wimbledon are two of the weeks on the tennis calendar that he cherishes most.

I’ll be honest, there are a lot of tournaments I play that don’t really interest me, he said. Wimbledon, the US Open and his hometown Citi Open, where he hands out tickets to 100 of his closest friends every night. They’re in a different category, especially when there’s a chance to play on Centre Court.

He's already played Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros. I don't really care, he said.

He's played at Rod Laver in Melbourne, for the Rod Laver. Sick is how he described it, but hHe will believe until his dying day that Arthur Ashe Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is the greatest tennis court in history.

Now maybe he has something else that is actually comparable.

This is serious, man, he said. It's a big deal. Definitely an iconic moment.

He will approach this iconic moment essentially without a coach. In the fall, he parted ways with Wayne Ferreira, who helped him revive his career over the past three years and is now guiding Draper's growth into the tennis player he wants to be.

Then Tiafoe went back to Diego Moyano, who coached him when he was a junior. That didn't work.

I'm not the easiest guy to work with, he said. I like to play the game the way I play the game.

Since the spring, he has been using Jordi Arconada, who is a friend and hitting partner as well as a coach, and TC Costello, who in his spare time runs the fitness program at the Junior Tennis Champions Center, the complex in the suburbs of Washington, DC, where he got his start because his father was a maintenance man.

He said he doesn’t want to hire a coach just to hire a coach. He wants someone who has reached the mountaintop, preferably as a player and coach, or even just as a top coach, like how Paul Annacone, a former coach of Roger Federer, manages Taylor Fritz or how Darren Cahill helps manage Sinner.

“I have no respect for many tennis fanatics,” he said.

He said he had his eye on some legends.

---

Perhaps something will emerge after Wimbledon, but whether the process begins on Friday night or sometime next week may depend on Alcaraz, the reigning champion.

He and Tiafoe pointed at each other in the corridors of the All England Club after their victories, just like the two Spidermen in that meme.

He's always smiling, Alcaraz said of Tiafoe. Tries to put on a show every time he steps on the field. Sounds like a guy Alcaraz knows.

The Spaniard and world No. 3 remembers that thrilling US Open semi-final, the visceral experience of taking on the most popular American male player in front of a raucous crowd of 24,000. Facing him on a much more respectable Centre Court will be different.

The crowd enjoyed that match, he said. We ended up playing five sets. It was a very exciting match, which hopefully won't be the same this year.

Regardless of the result, Tiafoe wouldn't mind another show like that. He already knows what he's going to eat, another plate of chicken and rice from Chipotle like he had on Wednesday before the game against Coric.

After that, it was all about serving well. He won 87 percent of the points with his first serve against Coric, stepping into the spotlight for the first time in ages and trying to have some fun.

I'm going to show my talents to the world, he said.

(Top photo: Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)