It’s Child Week

As recently as last week I was telling you that the 19-year-old phenomenon Joao Fonseca might be the true threat to the Sinner-Alcaraz regime atop men's tennis. And he will get a chance to play Alcaraz this very evening. But what if Fonseca is actually old and washed with a bad back, and the real contender is an even younger player? That is the hypothetical we can briefly entertain today, having just seen two buzzy teenagers win first-round matches at the Miami Open, one of them in historic fashion. Moise Kouame, born in 2009, which hurts to type, drew me in last month with his performance in Montpellier. The Frenchman became, at age 16, one of the youngest players since 2000 to qualify for the main draw of an ATP tournament. More than the achievement on paper, I was struck by his clear identity on court: a baseline solidity and ability to generate abrupt pace that I associate with Sinner or Novak Djokovic. Already his game looked spookily professional, and flaws—the serve, conditioning—were the kind that sort themselves out in time, especially taking into account his 6-foot-3 stature. At the time, I wrote that he could be competitive at the Challenger level by year's end, which would've been a great feat in itself. Just a few weeks later, he made it to a Challenger semifinal, and just a few weeks after that, he won at much higher level altogether. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTTEvab4qSo Kouame received a wild card into the main draw in Miami, and he had the relative good fortune of landing in the draw next to a qualifier, Zachary Svajda, currently ranked at a career-high No. 96. Their first-round match on Thursday was a sometimes ugly, swerving affair, and by the third set, Kouame was dealing with nasty cramps, but he held on to become the youngest-ever match winner in Miami, and the youngest 1000-level match winner since Rafa Nadal in 2003. Having just turned 17 earlier this month, Kouame also struggled with how to respond to a congratulatory direct message from Novak Djokovic, his idol; he solicited advice on live television.