Why João Fonseca’s first full ATP Tour tennis season puts him on track for the top

Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, a rising star and a tour stalwart took big steps, and two of the stranger rules in the sport reappeared.

If you’d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.

A big step for a rising star?

João Fonseca started the year with a bang — or actually a few of them.

The 19-year-old Brazilian, whose ferocious ground game makes him the most likely of his generation to join Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz at the top of the sport, won the Next Gen ATP Finals in December, aged 18. Then he qualified for his first Grand Slam, in Australia, where he overwhelmed Andrey Rublev in his opening match for his first win against an opponent ranked in the top 10.

A month later, he won his first ATP Tour title in Buenos Aires. Fonseca’s time had seemingly arrived. Except then it didn’t. Followed by Brazilian flags wherever he went, he thrilled in a Miami Open defeat against Alex de Minaur but then mostly had a rougher time, losing a series of first-round matches as the other ascendant player of his age bracket, Learner Tien, started notching top-10 wins all over. Britain’s Jack Draper schooled him at the French Open. The growing pains of a first full season on the ATP Tour took over.

Then on Sunday, Fonseca won his second title of the year and his first at ATP 500 level. He beat Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina — who is still searching for his first career title — to win the Swiss Indoors Basel. The quick, still conditions gave him time to set up on his fearsome groundstrokes and let him do what he does best at 19: hit a tennis ball harder than most players can, for longer than most players can. He can do it on clay, as he proved earlier in the year, where his serve leaps and he destroys shots even above his shoulders. There is plenty of evolution to be done, too.

The win in Switzerland makes him the world No. 28, with two weeks to go in the regular season. He started the year as the world No. 113.

Now consider this reference point: At the end of his first full season on the ATP Tour in 2021, when he was 18, Alcaraz finished as the world No. 32, a magical and magically inconsistent talent. Sinner, then a mostly one-dimensional ballstriking savant, finished 2020 as the world No. 37.

Fonseca is right on track. He is keeping up with Alcaraz in another way: Trophy in hand in Basel, he admitted that he and his team had made a bet — win one, and he shaves his head. Any dye is pending.

Sinner won the other indoor ATP 500 tournament this week, beating Alexander Zverev and some cramps to win 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 at the Vienna Open.

— Matt Futterman

How did Ann Li earn her first WTA Tour title in four years?

In a year when American women were seemingly everywhere at the top of tennis, going deep in the biggest tournaments, some lesser-known players from the country have also been having the best seasons of their careers.

Ann Li, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania, made her third WTA Tour final of the year in Guangzhou, China, last week, and this time she won it. Li, who had made two finals in the four seasons before this one, beat New Zealand’s Lulu Sun 7-6(6), 6-2. The title, Li’s first since 2021, pushed her ranking up to world No. 33, a career high.

Li had made the final at Cleveland’s Tennis in the Land two months ago and at the Singapore Open in February. She made the round of 16 at the U.S. Open, her best showing at a Grand Slam. Who beat her there? Another American, Jessica Pegula.

You can’t escape them. Four Americans — Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova, Pegula and Madison Keys — will play in the WTA Finals in Riyadh, which begins next week. Nine American women are in the top 40, two of them — Gauff and Keys — are Grand Slam champions this year, and Anisimova made two finals at that level.

Li isn’t done. She is set to play the last week of the season at the Jiangxi Open in China. And why not? She is 31-23 this year in tour-level matches, her best mark since 2021, when she went 19-10, and a good run would get her into the top 32 and in line for a seeding at the Australian Open in January.

Elsewhere on the WTA Tour, Belinda Bencic won her second title of 2025, beating Linda Nosková at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. Bencic, who spent time on the second and third tiers of the tennis circuit late last year in beginning her comeback from the birth of her first child, is now on the cusp of the top 10.

— Matt Futterman

And do two of tennis’ stranger rules need tweaking?

For the second year in a row, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Świątek got a WTA Tour rankings surprise, with points from their worst results of the season (which were counting toward their world ranking) falling off their totals. Last year, these penalties for not playing enough 500-level tournaments saw Sabalenka replace Świątek as world No. 1. This year, there is no such change, with the Belarusian remaining in top spot.

In this week’s update, Sabalenka lost 120 points to 108 for Świątek; last year, Świątek lost 120 points to 10 for Sabalenka. With the duo having committed the same infringement, such a massive difference in penalty, especially one linked to a player having a higher floor that season than her peer, seemed strange then and remains so now. Would a fixed penalty of X points per tournament be clearer for fans and fairer for players?

And then there’s Reilly Opelka’s route into the Paris ATP Masters 1000, which starts this week. The American serve bot withdrew from the second round of qualifying, and gave Aleksandar Vukic of Australia a walkover into the main draw. Later, his name ended up in the main draw anyway — because of the sport’s lucky loser rule.

With two withdrawals, Opelka got a spot as one of the highest-ranked “losers” in qualifying — despite having not actually lost, or played a match.

— James Hansen

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP:

🏆 Jannik Sinner (1) def. Alexander Zverev (2) 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 to win the Vienna Open (500) in Vienna. It is the Italian’s fourth title of 2025.

🏆 João Fonseca def. Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (8) 6-3, 6-4 to win the Swiss Indoors Basel (500) in Basel, Switzerland. It is the Brazilian’s second ATP Tour title.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Belinda Bencic (5) def. Linda Nosková (6) 6-2, 6-3 to win the Pan Pacific Open (500) in Tokyo. It is the Swiss’ second title of 2025.

🏆 Ann Li (2) def. Lulu Sun (Q) 7-6(6), 6-2 to win the Guangzhou Open (250) in Guangzhou, China. It is the American’s first WTA Tour title since 2021.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Lulu Li moves up 11 places from No. 44 to No. 33, a career-high ranking.

📈 João Fonseca moves up 18 places from No. 46 to No. 28, a career-high ranking.

📈 Lulu Sun reenters the top 100 after rising 31 spots from No. 116 to No. 85.

📉 Olga Danilović falls 18 places from No. 49 to No. 67.

📉 Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard drops 22 places from No. 33 to No. 55.

📉 Katie Boulter tumbles 16 spots from No. 63 to No. 79.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP

📍Paris: Paris Masters (1,000) featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Ben Shelton.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tennis Open (250) featuring Belinda Bencic, Leylah Fernandez, Victoria Mboko, Alexandra Eala.

📍Jiujiang, China: Jiangxi Open (250) featuring Ann Li, Ella Seidel, Yulia Putintseva, Yuan Yue.

📍Chennai, India: Chennai Open (250) featuring Donna Vekić, Janice Tjen, Lulu Sun, Maaya Rajeshwaran Revathi.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

Click here to read article