What’s the right moment to hitch your hopes to an up-and-coming tennis player?

People were having visions of Carlos Alcaraz’s future when he was 10, the age at which Babolat and the other big racket companies sometimes start handing out equipment and swag. At France’s Les Petit As, the premier tournament for juniors 14-and-under, any prospects racking up games, sets and matches will already have an agent in their parents’ ear, if not a signed contract.

By those measures, having faith in Joao Fonseca, the easy-going Brazilian teenager with the wavy light hair who can already hit serves at 140mph (225kmh), seems like a pretty conservative bet.

Some more numbers. At 18, he’s the youngest player to make the field for the ATP Next Gen Finals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a competition for the top-ranked men’s players who are 20 or younger. And at 6-foot-1 (185cm), Fonseca is in the Goldilocks zone — not too tall, not too short — of players who have won most of the Grand Slams the past decade.

Fonseca grew up worshipping Roger Federer, which is part of the reason his lead sponsor is On, the Swiss sports manufacturer that Federer has a significant stake in. On signed Fonseca, who hails from Rio de Janeiro, two years ago when he was just 16.

“They said it was going to be me, Iga (Swiatek) and Ben Shelton,” Fonseca recalled during an interview last month. “Of course I said yes.”

Perhaps Fonseca’s business acumen is as precocious as his tennis talent. On’s stock price was $17.36 two years ago. It’s around $55 now. His contract lets him travel with a physiotherapist full time; it’s also gotten him onto the practice court with Shelton, 22, when they have landed at the same tournaments.

The first time they met, at the 2023 Mallorca Championships, Shelton figured out Fonseca was the new guy in the On team and suggested they practice the next day.

“I was like, ‘I am nothing and you want to practice with me?’,” Fonseca said.

He wasn’t nothing then and he certainly isn’t now. He won the U.S. Open junior title in September 2023, the season he became the first player from Brazil to top the junior rankings. In February, he smashed Arthur Fils in the first round of the Rio Open, 6-0, 6-4. At the time, the loss appeared to be a major setback for Fils, who is now ranked top 20 in the world and is the favorite for the Next Gen tournament, which begins today. They played each other in the last match of the first day. Fonseca beat Fils again, in five best-of-four game sets, breaking on a sudden-death deuce in the final set before serving out like a veteran.

That first loss in Brazil has become more palatable for Fils ever since it happened. Fonseca started the year ranked world No. 727. He’s up to No. 145 now and he came within a couple of games of his first Grand Slam main draw in New York this August, losing to Eliot Spizzirri — four years his senior — in three sets in the last round of qualifying.

Joao Fonseca in full flight in Rio de Janeiro. (Wang Tiancong / Xinhua via Getty Images)

The obvious comparison to a top player is world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, given Fonseca’s big serve, easy baseline power and shy demeanor on the court and off it. Fonseca hums along like a flywheel, ready to whip his opponent off their axis when he leans into a forehand, or perhaps a two-handed backhand down the line. He can also change gear.

At the Madrid Open, Fonseca went a set down to Alex Michelsen, an American who is another rival in the 20-and-under bracket. Outplayed in cross-court forehand rallies, Fonseca started marmalizing balls straight down the middle and asking Michelsen to generate angles, pinging anything short to the corners. Michelsen couldn’t pass the exam: Fonseca served him a 6-0 bagel to level the match and prevailed in the third set.

“He is a player who can play his best under big pressure, and he has the ability to adapt fast to different situations,” his coach Guilherme Teixeira wrote over email. Teixeira has been working with his charge since he was 11; Fonseca’s mother, Roberta, has watched him play for much longer than that.

Roberta, who also answered questions over email, said she has never seen her son get nervous before a tennis match. She remembers him losing when he was eight or nine because he kept volleying balls that were heading out back into play. He was seriously upset leaving the court, but as soon as he saw his mother he started begging her to sign him up for another tournament.

None of this, including qualifying for the Next Gen Finals, guarantees anything. Alcaraz and Sinner both won it on their climb up the tennis mountain, but the tournament has also featured younger versions of Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz, and Casper Ruud — all of them Grand Slam finalists but just one of them, to date, a winner. Medvedev won the U.S. Open in 2021. Many of the fabled eight at the end of each season have never gotten close.

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Fonseca is in this year’s lineup alongside Fils and Luca Van Assche of France; Michelsen, Learner Tien and Nishesh Basavareddy of the U.S.; Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic and Shang Juncheng of China, who also goes by his Americanized name, Jerry Shang.

It’s hard to say whether there are any Grand Slam finalists in that group, especially in tennis. The kids with the swag and the spots at Les Petits As may be alright, but wariness in the face of teenage hype is the far safer posture. Brazil hasn’t produced a top men’s tennis player since Gustavo ‘Guga’ Kuerten, the three-time French Open champion and former world No. 1 who helped revolutionize tennis with his early adoption of polyester strings.

For decades, players from the country and the rest of South America have had to overcome their rearing almost exclusively on red clay. It’s a far greater challenge for them than for players from other red clay hubs like Spain because of the distance that South Americans have to travel to find different playing surfaces and opponents. There is no wonder that young people tend to gravitate to the far more accessible game of soccer instead, before getting to talk about the influence of World Cup trophies, Ronaldo Nazario and Neymar. To play tennis in Brazil, you mostly have to be a member of a private club.

Joao Fonseca has already represented Brazil at the Davis Cup. (Emmanuele Ciancaglini / Getty Images for ITF)

Fonseca remembers traveling to Europe to compete for the first time when he was about 13. He played on a public court in Germany with a picturesque view. Tennis balls appeared free and unlimited.

“In Europe, you have so much more help,” he said.

He was lucky enough to be born into a family of means with sports-mad parents. His mother flirted with professional volleyball. She and her husband, who competed in junior tennis in Brazil as a teenager, have run half-marathons and competed in road and mountain cycling and adventure races.

“Sport runs through our veins,” Roberta said.

Joao played just about anything they offered to him, including soccer, volleyball, swimming, judo, skateboarding, surfing, and skiing, plus tennis. His mother said he excelled at all of them.

At six, he would score all the goals at soccer tournaments for his academy while also chasing back on defense. He could swim all four strokes from an early age, and his swim club bumped him to the competitive team. He achieved his purple belt in judo at 10.

Teixeira spotted his tennis potential when he first saw him at 11. The quality of his shots, his pure contact with the ball, was far ahead of other kids his age and older, but there was something else he noticed. Wins didn’t excite him all that much and losses didn’t make him all that sad.

“On tour, you need to compete and practice week after week and be able to manage your emotions,” Teixeira said. “He just resets his mind and starts again.”

In the last year, Fonseca’s first as a full-fledged professional, Teixeira has seen him dial up that dedication. He is treating tennis as his career for the first time, engaging in practices and gym sessions with what Teixeira describes as a new level of seriousness.

This is a typical training day schedule for him, which begins with tests on his muscles to determine how hard he can go that day:

• 8:30 a.m.: Tests
• 9 a.m.: Physiotherapy and warm-up
• 10 a.m.: Gym
• 11 a.m.: Practice on court
• 1 p.m.: Lunch and rest
• 3 p.m.: On court
• 4:30 p.m.: Gym
• 5:30pm: Physiotherapy, if needed

Teixeira said Fonseca is also paying more attention to his rest and what he eats. He is diligent with breathing exercises that can help him stay calm during matches. Improving his footwork is high on the agenda for 2025.

Fonseca is still a teenager, though. He can only manage a month or so away from home before fatigue and homesickness set in. This season, he tried to play tournaments for four or five weeks, before returning home for a couple weeks of training and seeing his friends and family.

Joao Fonseca reacts to winning the U.S. Open boys’ singles title in 2023. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

He’s still a teenage tennis player too. His biggest challenge is consistency: figuring out how to win when he isn’t playing his best. In junior tennis, the better player — the one with the best technique and the best shots — usually wins the tournament. That’s not how it shakes out during the serious stuff.

“In the pro tour, there’s a lot of players that can find the solutions, and the ones that find more solutions during the tournaments, during the weeks, they have better results,” Fonseca said. He went 7-7 in ATP matches this year; not bad for an 18-year-old. Sinner was 11-10 in 2019, the year he turned 18.

Fonseca has time, but for some things he is impatient, especially shaking that assumed allegiance to red clay and slow courts. Instead, he wants grass to be his best surface one day

“I love Wimbledon,” he said. “I want to be like Sinner or (Novak) Djokovic. Those guys that play good on any surface.”

(Top photo: On)

Michael Vick’s recent reported hiring as the Norfolk State head football coach has prompted a response about his criminal past by the animal rights group PETA. Norfolk State has not confirmed Vick’s hiring, but it was reported on Tuesday by the Virginian-Pilot.

President Ingrid Newkirk provided a statement to Fox News Digital, recounting her experience with Vick during his sentencing for participating in illegal dog fighting in 2007. 

“After interviewing him at PETA’s office in Norfolk, Virginia while his sentence was under consideration, and hearing him tell me bold-faced lies about his poor dogs, I came to believe that he’s a charming, charismatic, psychopath, but since I believe he won’t fight dogs ever again, PETA is focusing on working with law enforcement to bust those who still do,” Ingrid said. 

Vick’s dog fighting scandal came to light in 2007 when his father Michael Boddi told The Atlanta Constitution-Journal that the former star quarterback was staging dogfights in the garage of the family’s home in Newport News, Virginia. Boddie also said Vick kept fighting dogs in the family’s backyard, including injured ones that the father would help nurse back to health. 

In April of that year, a search warrant for a drug investigation of Vick’s cousin Davon Boddie, resulted in authorities discovering evidence of unlawful dog fighting at one of Vick’s properties in Virginia. Vick was indicted in July 2007 for running an unlawful interstate dog fighting venture known as “Bad Newz Kennels” alongside three other men. 

Vick ultimately pleaded guilty to “Conspiracy to Travel in Interstate Commerce in Aid of Unlawful Activities and to Sponsor a Dog in an Animal Fighting Venture.” He also confessed to taking part in the killings of 6–8 dogs, by hanging, beating, and drowning.

Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick attends the Pro Bowl Games at Allegiant Stadium. (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)

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The crimes resulted in Vick spending 21 months in federal prison, which proved to be a transformative gap in his NFL career and reputation. While he returned to the NFL after serving his sentence, joining the Philadelphia Eagles, his public persona was forever tainted and overshadowed by the crimes. 

The backlash against Vick was particularly perpetuated by animal rights groups like PETA. PETA put out multiple statements about Vick following his 2007 indictment, and the organization even hosted him in September of that year for its “Developing Empathy for Animals” course. 

In a 2009 blog post titled “The Day I Spent With Michael Vick,” the organization expressed skepticism about his stated intention to become an “ally” in the fight against dog fighting. 

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick makes a stop in Durham, North Carolina, Friday, February 26, 2010, to speak to students and local residents at the New Horizons alternative school about his mistakes being involved in dog fighting and of second chances in life. He was introduced to the packed assembly room by Ralph Hawthorne, right, of the Humane Society of the United States. (Harry Lynch/Raleigh News Observer/MCT)

“Michael and his camp have done little more than mouth assurances that he’s learned his lesson. Since this meeting, they have only surfaced when Michael has been scheduled for court appearances—until now, when he is asking to get his old job back,” the blog read. 

At that time, Vick was attempting to launch an NFL comeback, which he successfully did in Philadelphia in 2009, where he played until 2013. 

He then joined the New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers. He last played in the NFL in 2015. 

Fox News Digital has reach out to Norfolk State University for comment. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Grainy game footage and yellowed newspaper clippings confer UCLA’s standing as college basketball royalty, the team’s status as a blue blood rooted in the success of a coach who retired nearly 50 years ago.

John Wooden’s 10 national championships in a 12-year span are more than any other program has won in its history. On the flip side, the Bruins have won just one championship since Wooden’s departure, Jim Harrick’s 1995 team preventing the school from going 0 for the last half century.

North Carolina, the fellow blue blood that the Bruins will face Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden in the CBS Sports Classic, has won five of its six titles since 1982. By comparison, the bulk of UCLA’s success can feel like something accomplished on peach baskets.

As the years pass, those banners hanging inside Pauley Pavilion fade like the memories of those championships. UCLA has gone 30 years without a title while 10 teams have added multiple banners to their collection over that same span. Has the fundamental power structure of the sport changed? Might the Bruins be on the verge of ceding their hallowed status, their blood no longer the deepest shade of blue?

“Hell no,” Marques Johnson, a member of Wooden’s final national championship team in 1975, said this week. “I just don’t think you give up that spot in terms of the prestige and elite-level claim that you deserve based on historically what you’ve done as a program.”

A blue blood, in Johnson’s view, is more of a historic honor than a contemporaneous one, belonging to teams that dominated the sport when it was gaining a foothold in the nation’s consciousness more than 50 years ago. Once you’re in, Johnson said, you never give up membership.

Historical references go back many decades, a 1951 story in the Cincinnati Enquirer describing Xavier’s early season losses as having come against teams listed in “college basketball’s blue blood directory.” The term has long become a favorite of broadcasters even if it was never one that Wooden used, according to Gary Cunningham, who played for the legendary coach before becoming one of his early successors.

Johnson’s bonafide blue bloods — UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Kansas — largely jibe with the list of the most decorated programs. Kentucky’s eight national championships rank second behind UCLA, followed by North Carolina and Connecticut (six each), Duke and Indiana (five each) and Kansas (four).

While Indiana won titles in 1940 and 1953, the Hoosiers are more widely associated with their success under coach Bobby Knight, who won three more championships in the 1970s and ‘80s. Johnson puts Indiana in his second tier of elite teams.

“We’ve got to slide them in there,” Johnson said, “because they were a little bit late to the party, not exactly nouveau riche but around and dominant long enough where they definitely need to be talked about in the same breath.”

Connecticut guard Tristen Newton celebrates after their win against San Diego State to clinch a national championship on April 3, 2023.

(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)

Who does Johnson consider nouveau riche? He listed UConn and Gonzaga, teams that have enjoyed wild success the last few decades but haven’t won enough historically to be considered classic blue bloods. Gonzaga continues to seek its first title, having lost in the championship game in 2017 and 2021.

UCLA’s run of 10 titles from 1964 to 1975 puts the Bruins in a standalone category, according to Johnson.

“That’s something,” Johnson said, “that will never ever be duplicated by any school in history for a number of reasons, as we know — NIL and one-and-dones and all that.”

Even though Duke has won all of its titles since 1991, Johnson said the Blue Devils qualify as a blue blood based on their having been a top team long before that, reaching Final Fours in 1963, 1964 and 1978.

Jay Bilas, a center for the Blue Devils as the team was establishing itself as a national power under coach Mike Krzyzewski in the mid-1980s, said his definition of blue blood mirrors that of the Supreme Court when it comes to obscenity.

“I can’t define it,” BIlas said, “but I know it when I see it.”

A blue blood, as far as Bilas is concerned, combines sustained high-level success with a tradition of championships. Bilas agreed with Johnson’s characterization of UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke as no-brainers but added UConn as a top-five school based on the Huskies’ recent run that has six championships since 1999 and back-to-back titles the last two seasons under coach Danny Hurley.

“Nobody’s been better than UConn the last 25 years,” said Bilas, now a veteran analyst for ESPN.

Part of the fun in discussions of who qualifies as a blue blood is that there’s rarely consensus.

Bilas said he considered Michigan State, which won titles in 1979 and 2000 and has made eight additional Final Four appearances, a blue blood but understood not everyone agreed — including Spartans coach Tom Izzo.

“Oddly enough,” Bilas said, “Izzo would say no and I used to argue with him and say, ‘No, you’re a blue blood’ and he’d be like, ‘Nah, I’m not sure we’ve achieved that.’ ”

UCLA remains firmly entrenched as a blue blood despite its recent lack of titles, Bilas said, because of its three consecutive Final Fours under coach Ben Howland from 2006-08 and another appearance under coach Mick Cronin in 2021.

“It’s kind of hard to go against UCLA winning 10 out of 12 and they’re not a blue blood,” Bilas said. “Now, even though UCLA hasn’t really sustained the same sort of dominance, they haven’t fallen off a cliff, either. It’s just when your standard is to win 10 out of 12, nothing looks quite as good. So UCLA is in there and they’re probably top five.”

One of the biggest questions in parsing blue bloods is where is the cutoff line? Do schools like Louisville and Villanova, with multiple championships, belong? What about Syracuse, which won just one title but enjoyed a decades-long run of success under coach Jim Boeheim?

UCLA coach John Wooden and his players celebrate with their trophy after defeating Duke to win the 1964 national title in Kansas City, Mo.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

“To me,” Bilas said, “blue blood is more of a feeling than a recognized moniker that we hand out like, ‘OK, here are our blue bloods’ and ‘Hey, you’re almost a blue blood, another few years and you’ll get in.’ There’s no arbiter for that, but it’s an interesting barroom question.”

Cronin said he considered a blue blood to be defined by the public’s perception of who’s supposed to be good, listing the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Dodgers based on their success when most adults were growing up.

“These teams are historically good teams and have won titles and competed at a high level, so there’s a connotation with a certain program whether it’s college football or basketball, whether it’s the NBA or whatever,” Cronin said. “Who are the blue bloods in the NBA? You would say [Boston] Celtics, Lakers. And then really, that stems from the ‘80s, but we would say that because that’s what we all [knew as children.]”

But perception can differ from reality, Cronin said, given downturns by those same teams. UCLA and North Carolina are trying to rebound from recent struggles — the Bruins posted a losing record last season and the Tar Heels failed to make the NCAA tournament two years ago. Both have learned that being considered a blue blood doesn’t put extra points on the scoreboard.

Along those lines, Cronin said, he’d rather be a big boy — a team with the most money — than a blue blood.

“All you’ve got to do is look at who’s getting what recruits,” Cronin said. “Look, you’re talking about certain kids, they’re going to the highest bidder now — 90% of these kids in basketball and football. I’d rather be a big boy than a blue blood in this era because the big boy’s got the advantage.”