PARIS \u2014 At 25, F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime<\/a> is still on his way up. Just a couple years shy of the typical late-20s athletic peak for men, the Canadian is far from old.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not young anymore though, especially in tennis terms. He\u2019s played through his teenage years, as a possible next big thing. He\u2019s gotten within shouting distance of the top of the tennis mountain, tumbled back down, and then climbed back up, all the way to a top-four seeding at this year\u2019s French Open<\/a> and a place in the world\u2019s top five.<\/p>\n His first match, Tuesday evening against Daniel Altmaier of Germany, was a five-set saga. Auger-Aliassime clinched it in a match-deciding tiebreak, winning 4-6, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, 7-6(7) after four hours, 16 minutes that captured the essence of a player desperate to become a mainstay at the top of the sport. Auger-Aliassime came back from a set down twice, and from down a break of serve final set. His mind had every opportunity to wander toward calling it a night and looking toward the grass, a surface far more hospitable to his power game.<\/p>\n Instead, he hung tough.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s the first time that I\u2019ve asked myself what player do I feel like?\u201d Auger-Aliassime said of his career-high No. 5\u00a0 world ranking in a news conference before the tournament.<\/p>\n \u201cI am who I am. I believe I am a good tennis player. Obviously Carlos is not here, so that\u2019s why I\u2019m fourth seed and not fifth. I\u2019m currently fifth in the world, and I\u2019ve worked for my spot there.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a nice neighborhood. Three of the four people ahead of him are all-time greats: Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Novak Djokovic<\/a>. The fourth, Alexander Zverev<\/a>, is arguably the best active men\u2019s player to have never won a Grand Slam, a three-time major finalist. It\u2019s a pretty lofty spot.<\/p>\n Plenty of highly touted players have held it the past couple years before stalling there. Some of them have been to world No. 4, depending on their health or how much Djokovic was playing between Grand Slams.<\/p>\n Taylor Fritz. Jack Draper. Andrey Rublev. Lorenzo Musetti. Holger Rune. Ben Shelton. All of them are top players. All of them have run up against a seemingly impenetrable ceiling, tied to the top three\u2019s domination of the Grand Slams and Zverev\u2019s consistency in getting to their final stages.<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime, who spent 2023 and 2024 managing a knee injury while Alcaraz, and then Sinner, staged a takeover, is far from giving up.<\/p>\n \u201cHe never lost the belief,\u201d said Federic Fontag, the veteran coach who started working with Auger-Aliassime in 2017 and took on a full-time role in 2020.<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime staged his first rise by playing the version of the sport he thought he needed to topple the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic. Since his first descent, he has learned that getting to the top in Sinner and Alcaraz\u2019s version of tennis needs something different.<\/p>\n For Auger-Aliassime, it was yet another big ask in a lifetime full of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI was kind of, you know, put with high expectations from 14, 15-years old,\u201d Auger-Aliassime said during a recent interview.<\/p>\n Seven years ago, when Auger-Aliassime played a 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals of Queen\u2019s, the prestigious warm-up tournament for Wimbledon, former world No. 4 Greg Rusedski predicted that Auger-Aliassime and Tsitsipas would meet in 15 Grand Slam finals during their careers.<\/p>\n That prophesy has not aged so well.<\/p>\n Still, Auger-Aliassime is blessed with the physical gifts to excel at nearly any sport. His coaches say he has long approached tennis with a level of seriousness and discipline far beyond his years. He has long had one of the biggest serves in the game, and when he gets the chance to hit it, a huge forehand to follow it up.<\/p>\n He will need that and more to remain in his lofty position through the end of the season. The gulf between Carlos Alcaraz at No. 2 and Zverev at No. 3 is more than 6,000 rankings points. That\u2019s three Grand Slam titles and change.<\/p>\n On Monday, Shelton moved 20 points ahead of Auger-Aliassime, to bump him to No. 6.\u00a0 Just 730 points separate Auger-Aliassime and Alexander Bublik at No. 10.\u00a0 With the draw at Roland Garros becoming more open by the day, there is likely to be a good bit of shuffling when the red clay settles on Court Philippe-Chatrier in 10 days\u2019 time.<\/p>\n Fontag said the biggest threat to a player like Auger-Aliassime does not come from their peers. It\u2019s all the quality lower down the ladder.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are between 5 and 10 percent under your level one day, you can lose to the No. 60 or 70,\u201d Fontag said<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime hasn\u2019t been in that zip code since 2019, but in early 2024 he was closer to world No. 60 than he was to world No. 5. He was getting dangerously close to entering that awkward existence of a player who is more famous and far better remunerated that his ranking suggests he should be.<\/p>\n \n Carlos Alcaraz dismissed F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime 6-2, 6-4 at last year\u2019s ATP Tour Finals. (Clive Brunskill \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A Canadian with French and Togolese heritage, Auger-Aliassime is the rare player with natural appeal on three continents. He has long had lucrative sponsorship deals with Adidas and Babolat, which are endemic to tennis. He recently renewed both. But Auger-Aliassime also has sizable deals with major companies whose products are only tangentially related to sports, including Rodgers Communications, the Canadian telecom corporation, and BNP Paribas, the multinational financial institution.<\/p>\n Those are far harder to get. Auger-Aliassime began working with the sport\u2019s representation behemoth, IMG, ahead of the 2025 season.\u00a0 In March he became an ambassador for Polestar, the Swedish electronic automobile manufacturer.<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime said he has \u201clearned to be able to separate things where, \u2018OK, the tennis I need to take care of, and then the deals and the attention and all the pressure that comes from the business side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n The Polestar deal followed three hard years of figuring out how to manage a ligament tear in his left knee that had him hobbling around the court in 2023. He\u2019d finished 2022 by qualifying for the ATP Tour Finals, the season-ending tournament for the top eight players of the season. By March of 2024, he\u2019d tumbled to No. 36.<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime never had surgery, but did receive stem cell injections to promote healing as he mostly played through pain for two seasons. At one point, with the improvement slower than everyone wanted it to be, Fontag offered to step back, or even leave.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need the relationship to be based on the truth and the reality and the needs,\u201d he said. He wanted Auger-Aliassime to not blame everything on the injury. \u201cWe have goals.\u00a0 If there is no result where is it coming from? If I\u00a0 can\u2019t bring it, we are bringing in expertise outside of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime\u2019s game, which he has built around that big serve and forehand, thrives indoors. That has forced him to play a lot in tournaments and at times of the year when other top players take breaks, because those events give him his best chance to win.<\/p>\n That became especially complicated during the past three seasons, as Auger-Aliassime faced a trifecta of obstacles. He had to simultaneously manage his injury, the challenge of climbing back up the ladder while playing the top players far earlier in tournaments than he had gotten used to, and altering his game to fit the changing demands that Alcaraz and Sinner have put on the chasing pack.<\/p>\n He can remember being taught the fundamentals of building a point and waiting for opportunities, the way Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Andy Murray all did in their prime.<\/p>\n \u201cAmazing strengths, but they would kind of know when to use them,\u201d Auger-Aliassime said.<\/p>\n \u201cRoger would use a slice to mix things up as well, on grass, especially.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of this is used now, but it\u2019s such a higher speed and such a higher level of efficiency. And the defense also has become not just defense. You\u2019ll play Carlos and Jannik and you\u2019re coming to the net and if you don\u2019t approach really well, they might hit a passing shot that you don\u2019t really have a play on.<\/p>\n \u201dThe speed is so much faster. You need to be so much more precise with that speed to put the opponent in a difficult position.\u201d<\/p>\n As his knee improved, his serve and his overall explosiveness got back to where it had been and even a few clicks better, but the progress was gradual.<\/p>\n A telling Auger-Aliassime statistic is his tiebreak record, where serving well at a crucial moment becomes a difference-maker. He plays a lot of them, because his serve is hard to handle and his return game, especially on his backhand side, can be vulnerable.<\/p>\n In 2022, he went 60-27 and was 32-23 in tiebreaks. During the two injury-plagued seasons that followed he went, 52-44 and was 24-26 in tiebreaks. Last year he was 50-23 and 32-14 in tiebreaks. Tweaking that serve, trying to make it more accurate without losing velocity as he did when he was injured, has helped him gain confidence and, he thinks, instils more uncertainty in his opponents.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes guys feel like if you play F\u00e9lix it\u2019s going to be a tough day because the best thing you\u2019re going to do is beat me in tiebreaks,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I play like that against a majority of players and I get broken against only a few of the best players in the world, I become very dangerous and consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Through last season, Auger-Aliassime gradually climbed the ladder. Then, at the U.S. Open, the draw delivered a matchup against Zverev, the No. 3 seed, in the third round. Auger-Aliassime was the world No. 27.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a key match because you win that big match and then you beat the third seed and all of a sudden, I\u2019m in a position where I can win the fourth round, I can win the quarterfinals,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are matches that are tough, but that are attainable.\u201d<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime was finally playing the way he wanted to play, using his strengths and being solid on the backhand side, but also waiting for the right opportunity, being disciplined, but also aggressive.<\/p>\n He beat Zverev in four sets, turning the match in a second set tiebreak. Then he beat Andrey Rublev in straight sets and Alex de Minaur in four, winning two of them in tiebreaks. He made Jannik Sinner work in the semis, winning the second set before losing the next two.<\/p>\n Then the fall indoor swing arrived with Auger-Aliassime in top form, serving in a windless environment and pounding balls through fast courts. He won the European Open in Brussels, lost the Paris Masters final to Sinner, and made the semifinals at the ATP Tour Finals to finish the year as the world No. 5.<\/p>\n Now comes the next climb up the mountain, starting with a second-round duel against Rom\u00e1n Andr\u00e9s Burruchaga, an Argentine who loves clay-court tennis and made the U.S. Men\u2019s Clay Court Championships finals in Houston this spring. After a stodgy run of early-round exits, which followed a title at the Montepellier Open and a final at the Rotterdam Open, Auger-Aliassime is looking forward.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy with how things have evolved,\u201d Auger-Aliassime said. \u201cSometimes I wish it was a bit quicker, that I was getting the results that I wanted, but I know it\u2019s going to come if I keep doing good work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n PARIS \u2014 At 25, F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime is still on his way up. Just a couple years shy of the typical<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/05\/27093706\/Felix-Auger-Aliassime-Tennis-scaled.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=cover","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Carlos](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/05\/27094956\/Carlos-Alcaraz-Felix-Auger-Aliassime-scaled.jpg\")
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