Joao Fonseca caught off guard; goodbye, Wimbledon

At Wimbledon, in the third round, there was an unexpected elimination: Joao Fonseca bids farewell to the Championships after losing to the resurgent Roman Safiullin—a former Top 40 player who is currently ranked outside the world’s top 100—at the end of a match in which the Brazilian never managed to find his rhythm: The Russian won 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, advancing to the round of 16 in a surprise upset.

Fonseca arrived at Wimbledon with reasonable expectations, buoyed by his quarterfinal run at Roland Garros, even though he isn’t exactly a player accustomed to playing on grass. In the first two rounds, he had defeated Spain’s Roberto Bautista-Agut and the Netherlands’ Jesper de Jong without dropping a single set, but Safiullin was able to completely throw him off his game, defeating him without much difficulty.

For the Russian—who achieved his best Grand Slam result at Wimbledon by reaching the quarterfinals in 2023—this is his third victory in this tournament, following much harder-fought five-set wins against his compatriot Andrey Rublev, ranked No. 13 in the ATP rankings, and the Dutch player Botic van de Zandschulp—both matches won in the 10-point tiebreak in the final set.

Today’s loss will have no significant impact on Joao Fonseca’s ranking—he also exited in the third round last year and will therefore remain in the Top 30— but it raises new questions about a player who, at the start of his career on the main tour, was touted as the next rival to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Time is on his side (he was born in 2006, after all), but the result in London puts his ambitions into perspective—at least for now.