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.
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.
Also winning big on Thursday was Darwin Blanch. Born in 2007 into a family of tennis-playing siblings, and discussed in rhapsodic tones by the youth development coach Rick Macci, Blanch has been a known quantity in American tennis for a few years now, despite being only 18 years old at present. He is now based at the Juan Carlos Ferrero Academy that produced Alcaraz. He has his own claim to prodigy status: When Blanch was 14, he became the second-youngest player ever to earn an ATP ranking point.
Two years ago in Miami, when he was 16, Blanch was awarded the same main-draw wild card that Kouame received this year. (Why is that? The agency IMG used to own the Miami Open—now a holding company that contains IMG owns the tournament—and it has made a habit of treating the young talent on their roster.) That time, Blanch got routined by Tomas Machac in the first round, and a few weeks later, he got another wild card in Madrid, where he was ground into a fine paste by clay-court Rafael Nadal, 6-1 6-0. In the years since this exposure to high-grade tennis, Blanch has slowly ascended the rankings. Last week he got the best result of his career, beating then-world No. 52 Terence Atmane at the Phoenix Challenger (shoutout to Defector reader Ben Jeffers who was in attendance). On the strength of his mighty lefty forehand and all-court game, Blanch beat world No. 78 Jan Lennard Struff on Thursday in Miami. It was his first 1000-level match win.
The increasing physical demands of the sport have made teenage superstardom a figment of the past. There aren't many players 18 and under who can mix it up with top-100 ATP players, but here are two of those names to remember. Kouame moves up to a live ranking of No. 321, Blanch is at No. 249, and both are still alive in Miami.
