“Brimming with confidence” doesn’t seem like a sufficient metaphor for a Frances Tiafoe in a superb mood. Standing next to him I feel irradiated with confidence, like there’s something beaming out of the portal in his gap-toothed grin. And the restorative effects linger, a little extra pep in my step as I ascend four flights of stairs afterward. When I catch him for a chat at the Cincinnati Open on Wednesday, he was still beaded with sweat from a straight-set victory over Lorenzo Musetti, which he celebrated with a palm held low to the court, in what is almost certainly the first-ever “too small” gesture in professional tennis history. Tiafoe has a rich history of importing basketball celebrations into this sport, and this one is a personal favorite of mine, though let the record show that the Olympic bronze medalist Lorenzo Musetti stands an average 6 foot 1, roughly the same height as our protagonist. But you can understand the need to robustly celebrate this win, one of many that Tiafoe has strung together in recent weeks to turn around what had been an abysmal season.

Tiafoe spent 2023 building his consistency and rising into the 10 for the first time; he spent most of 2024 losing touch with that. In July his ranking fell to No. 29, the lowest it had been in more than two years. So far this year he has lost to 11 players ranked outside the top 50. Perhaps these were the opponents referenced in the colorful lament he let loose at Wimbledon: “Literally this week last year I was 10 in the world and now I’m barely seeded here. Losing to clowns; I hate to say it, but I’m just gonna be honest.” The thing about calling your coworkers clowns is that you’ve got to immediately back it up with your play. And Tiafoe nearly backed it up to the extreme by taking eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz to five sets at Wimbledon—an echo of the raucous five-setter they’d played in the semifinals of the 2022 US Open, which was easily the high-water mark of the American’s career to date.

What is it about these two that makes for such a good matchup? “Well, I mean, I think”—he takes a sharp exhale through teeth, as if measuring out his self-belief into nonlethal doses—”we’re both probably two of the more talented guys. I mean, obviously, he’s probably the most talented guy here. And myself…look, man, at my best, I can do some special things. You can see in a performance like today: I’m one of the best players in the world.”

He rattles off the things he and Alcaraz have in common: “We’re quick, I can volley, he can volley, he can defend, turn defense to offense, he can play all these shots, he’s got great intangibles, so do I. We kinda can do all similar things, it’s down to who wants it more in the end, or who takes those moments better.” I am reminded once again about the bell curve of sports commentary. High-decibel talk show idiots say it’s all about who wants it more; middlebrow commentators like myself try to offer sober technical explanations; transcendent athletic geniuses say it’s all about who wants it more. 

Tiafoe thinks he’s grown a lot in between those two five-setters with Alcaraz. “At the Open when we played, I was hanging on for dear life, and I think this one I thought I was a better player,” he says. “Look, I had 4-all, 0–30, second serve in the fourth. And I had another 0–30 earlier in that set. So I think I was the better cat that time. But again, he’s a champion and he did what champions do and he found a way.”

While Tiafoe has slipped out of the top 20, the tour has been dominated by Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who are four to five years younger than him. In Vienna last fall, Tiafoe happened to be one of the players to face Sinner right before he transformed into the best player in the world, No. 1. Did he see any signs that the leap was coming? Tiafoe said he was in a bad headspace back then—he was about to begin a long skid, and about to split from a successful partnership with coach Wayne Ferreira—but he did notice that this dude was playing unusually well. He generously heaped compliments on Sinner’s improvements in his fitness and serve. Asked if he feels some urgency to hit his career goals, now that the Big Three are phasing out and the Sincaraz era seems to be phasing in, he says that the future is not nearly as “brutal” as the past.

“Even though Sinner and these guys are playing really well, obviously you still wanna do really well, because you feel like when their game is complete, it’s gonna be very, very tough,” he says. “Granted, it’s a little different, they’re younger than me, I don’t have that fear factor. When I’m playing Novak, Rafa, these guys—man, I’ve been watching those guys since I was a kid. So you can’t get over the Mount Rushmore [thing]. I don’t have that feeling when I’m playing these guys. They might beat me, but I don’t have that ‘Oh man, that’s Medvedev.’ I grew up with these guys.”

He’s fresh off a 6–3, 6–2 win against Musetti, one of the top players of the moment and the No. 14 seed in Cincy, who admittedly might have been a bit depleted from a long summer of tennis and a tricky three-setter he’d played the previous day. Classic Tiafoe antics were in abundance. Odd off-speed shots that bend in the air, scooting around the court at sneaker-shredding speeds, an unteachable sense of showmanship. Earlier this month he put together a semifinal run at his home tournament in Washington, which was just the second time this year he’s won three matches in a row. It’s no coincidence that Tiafoe perks up around this time every season. A specific energy courses through him whenever he is standing on a hard court on this continent.

I even start a sentence, “When you get back on American hard court—”and he finishes the thought for me. “Oh, it’s different. Even playing in Canada it’s not the same. Just being in America, man, it’s different. I’m playing, it’s packed. Outside I’m practicing, it’s packed. I’m going on court, Grandstand, it’s fucking nuts out there. So it’s just great to be out there and compete. You just appreciate it and want to be out there,” he says, as a fan comes by to make sure he knows that she started a specific chant from the Musetti match, neatly demonstrating his point. 

The rhythm is returning to his tour life. After a couple months of coaching turnover, Tiafoe says he’s been enjoying working with newly hired David Witt, whose easygoing style has worked well for other top players in the past, most recently Jessica Pegula and Maria Sakkari. “It’s been the best it’s been for a really long time,” he says of his team. “[Witt] wants me to be me, but also he wants me to tap in when it’s time to tap in,” he says. That was the Tiafoe conundrum in a nutshell: brilliant player who needs to balance flamboyant self-expression with unglamorous consistency. I can only report what I saw and heard, but this man, beaming and laughing and poking me to emphasize his points, seems like he found a joy and steadiness that have eluded him for the better part of a year. Consider Frances Tiafoe tapped in.