Typically, if I were to spend this newsletter on a young prospect still ranked well outside the top 100, for the fourth time in the span of a single season, I’d tell myself to drink a cool glass of water and restore my sense of context. Don’t get too lost in the sauce of the present. History will not look kindly upon impulsive joy-mongering. Many thrilling talents age into normalcy. I know all too well the feeling that I’m watching a fledgling superstar, only to look upon my blog posts, years later, and despair. Fans of Canadian tennis might also be familiar with that feeling, and for the same reasons—bonjour, Felix, Denis, Bianca.

But my curse is that I must write from a place of excitement. Writing about a sport played for entertainment feels like dry-heaving if there is no initial spark, no fundamental thrill or curiosity. At risk of looking stupid and gullible, we look again to the Brazilian phenom Joao Fonseca. Last time we checked in, he was drawing huge crowds at the US Open qualifying rounds, and even though he lost the final match that would have granted him a place in the main draw, he left a strong impression. At that time, he had just turned 18 years old. In the months since, he has played pretty well on the Challenger Tour, bumping his ranking up another 10 spots to qualify for a year-end treat. The Next Gen Finals are a showcase for the eight highest-ranked players aged 20 or under. The event has its quirks—an abbreviated scoring system, with no-ad scoring and a shorter serve clock and sets to four games—but in its brief existence it has been a decent predictor of future success. Previous winners from 2017 to 2021 were Hyeon Chung, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz. All of these players delivered on that promise; even the injury-tormented Chung beat Novak Djokovic and made an Australian Open semifinal before he was undone by injuries.

In late November, Fonseca secured the last spot in the eight-man field, becoming the youngest of the bunch. For his first match of the tournament, Fonseca had to play the top seed, and the most accomplished of the bunch. Arthur Fils, currently the world No. 20, seems so far along the path to ordinary tour glory that an event like the Next Gen Finals feels like a childish afterthought for him. The young Frenchman just wrapped up a season that a veteran could be proud of. He won more points at ATP 500 tournaments than any other player on tour and took home a nice $615,000 bonus for his efforts. He beat world No. 4 Sascha Zverev on clay in Hamburg to win his first ATP 500 title, and then followed it up with another 500 title in Tokyo a few months later. He’s surely daydreaming more about Melbourne, Australia, than Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he is competing this week.

So Fonseca was the underdog in their matchup—right? The reality is that the kid had already beaten Fils, in front of a home crowd in Rio, back in February. It was still the biggest moment of the then 17-year-old’s career. In truth, Fonseca didn’t stack up the wins quite as quickly as I had allowed myself to believe after watching him demolish Fils that week. I was anticipating a more grandiose, Alcaraz-style arc from there. That’s not what transpired, but he did break into the top 150, and watching him this week, it is so obvious that he has become a better and scarier tennis player over the course of this year. While defeating Fils in their group-stage match on Wednesday, Fonseca bore a freakish tennis resemblance to the current best player in the world. The ball pops off his racquet in that otherworldly Sinner-esque way. The most gifted ball-strikers in the world have this unfair ease about them, where sound technique and perfect timing produce stunning shape and weight of shot that cannot be faked. And as with Sinner, it’s not a lopsided attack. Fonseca might soon have that trademark package: a forehand and a backhand that are each best-in-class, leaving opponents nowhere to attack. Also like Sinner, Fonseca scuttles around the court with that wide, balanced base that reminds me faintly of a crab: feet farther than shoulder distance apart, light on his feet but still drawing power from his legs, and ready to explode into a ground stroke at any time. He’s finding some more mph on his serve, too. And he already plays this well while basically having the build of a teenager. The strength and conditioning upside here is serious.

If Fonseca wants to fulfill another aspect of his already overly convincing Sinner impression, he can simply go ahead and win the tournament, which is what Sinner did when he was Fonseca’s age—technically, a few weeks younger. On Thursday, Fonseca played another excellent group-stage match against the talented 19-year-old American player Learner Tien, whose game of angles looked fussy and underpowered in the face of Fonseca’s assault. His terrific power on the run would be scary even in higher-powered company; I’m not accustomed to seeing tennis quite this good in December. So it’s okay to keep talking about Joao Fonseca. As one of my favorite dumb-guy draft phrases goes, this is a “can’t miss” prospect. I will not be eating my words anytime soon. You’ll see Joao Fonseca taking on Carlos Alcaraz in the Roland-Garros final before you’ll see me rue a single word of the above.