Frances Tiafoe Jr. is an American tennis player. His best tennis professional’s association (ATP) world ranking is 25th in the Men’s Singles as of May 2, 2022. Tiafoe won his first ATP title at the 2018 Delray Beach Open and has become the youngest American to win a tournament on an ATP tour since Andy Roddick in 2002.
Tiafoe, the son of Sierra Leonean, grew up at the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC), a USTA regional training center in Maryland, and his father worked as a maintenance manager. His unique career and success as a teenager meant that he was widely seen as a great prospect for becoming one of the next tennis stars in the United States.
Tiafoe was ranked in the top 100 of the ATP ranking for the first time in the year 2016. Tiafoe’s best performance at the Grand Slam event reached the quarterfinals at the 2019 Australian Open. At the age of 17, he became the youngest American to play in the French Open’s main draw since Michael Chang in 1989. As a teenager, he won the National Junior Amateur Championships, succeeded on the ATP Challenger Tour, reached nine finals, and won four titles.
Tiafoe Net Worth
Tiafoe’s net worth is estimated to exceed the US $ 6 million. Despite the limited success of the ATP Tour alone, he has won over $ 5 million in prizes alone. Tiafoe had a sponsorship deal with the German giant Adidas in his early days. But in 2017 he signed a contract with Nike.
Yonex, known for its tennis rackets, has also signed a contract with Tiafoe. And in 2019, luxury watch brand TAG Heuer also signed a contract with an American. Tiafoe received the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award for his work outside the courtroom during the COVID-19 blockade in early 2020. He has also done a lot of work to give back to the African-American community.
ALSO READ: LUKE RUSSERT NET WORTH: HOW MUCH HIS HARD WORK PAYS HIM?
Tiafoe Early Life
Frances Tiafoe was born on January 20, 1998, with his twin brothers Franklin in Maryland, to the constant (well known as Frances Sr.) Tiafoe and Alphina Kamara, are immigrants from Sierra Leone. His father emigrated to the United States in 1993, and his mother joined him in 1996 to escape the civil war in her home country. In 1999, his father began working as a day laborer with a construction worker building a JTCC in College Park, Maryland.
When the facility was completed, he was hired as an onsite manager and given a spare office to live in the center. Frances and Franklin lived in the center with their father five days a week for the next 11 years. They used their living conditions to play tennis regularly when they were four years old. They were with her mother when she wasn’t working at night as a nurse.
When Tiafoe and his brother were five years old, their father arranged for them to bypass the regular membership fees and start teaching at the JTCC. At the age of eight, Misha Kouznetsov began coaching Tiafoe at the center and became interested in him after seeing his interest in work ethic and sports.
Kouznetsov helped sponsor Tiafoe to play in the tournament as he passed the junior. Francis’ brother Franklin stayed in Maryland, where he played high school tennis at DeMatha Catholic High School and later at Salisbury University.
Tiafoe Career
Tiafoe has won a series of high-level junior titles and reached the world’s second-highest career in the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Junior Rankings. Combined with his junior success and extraordinary upbringing, he became nationally famous before turning. He became a professional.
At the age of 14, Tiafoe won his first prestigious international tournament in Les Petits As, France. The following year, in December 2013, Tiafoe became the youngest player to win the Orange Bowl, one of the top-class A events at ITF Junior Circuit. A month before he turned 16, he defeated his compatriot Stefan Kozlov in the final.
A few months later, he also won the second Class B1 event, the Easter Bowl. With these two big titles, Tiafoe was the top seed in the 2014 French Open Junior Tournament and was upset in the second round. He was then defeated by final world champion Noah Rubin at Wimbledon.
Tiafoe Personal Life
Tiafoe’s tennis idol was Juan Martin del Potro. This is also because Argentina was the first professional to sign a tennis ball for him. The two played first in Acapulco in 2017, with De Potro winning the match in the third set of tiebreakers. Tiafoe won his first victory over his idol at the 2018 Delray Beach Open on his way to the first ATP title in his career.
ALSO READ: LI BINGBING NET WORTH: IS SHE A BILLIONARE?
