334 SEPTEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
With an arsenal of strokes—and a
maturity that belies his 19 years—
Canadian tennis player Félix
Auger-Aliassime is gunning for
the game’s top ranks.
Serving Notice
Félix Auger-Aliassime’s Wimbledon warm-up earlier this
year laid bare his extraordinary promise. At the Queen’s Club
Championships, he beat Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov, and Nick
Kyrgios—three players routinely mentioned as Next Big Things—without
so much as dropping his serve. Though he just turned 19, he seems to
have a poise and maturity beyond his years—something that, as much as
his sensational tennis skills, has people talking about this Montreal
native, currently ranked 23rd in the world, as a serious threat to the longtime
rule of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic.
Auger-Aliassime began playing tennis at the age of four at the suggestion
of his father, Sam, a tennis coach, originally from Togo. (His mother,
Marie, is a teacher, and his older sister Malika plays college tennis.)
“He just transmitted his passion to us,” Auger-Aliassime says, grinning
broadly, revealing the gap in his front teeth. “I don’t really have a memory
of not playing. And at a very young age, I told him, ‘I want to be a
TALENT professional tennis player.’ What I like most about the game is
its competitive side. It’s a duel—like chess or like gladiators.
It’s two players confronting each other and finding solutions,
and I really like that.”
In both his love for the sport and his determination to excel at
it, Auger-Aliassime’s hero, inevitably, is Federer—who invited
the young player to join him at a training camp in Dubai in 2017.
“As a kid, you see Federer with such distance, he’s almost like a
divinity,” he says. “But for me to talk to him and play with him—it
reduced this distance a little bit.”
Perhaps that distance will soon be reduced in other ways, too, as
Auger-Aliassime continues to climb the tennis ladder. For now,
though, he is simply working hard. “Obviously the winning part
is great, but that’s not everything,” he says. “The best thing for me
is the sound of a ball that has been hit well.”—sarah crompton
HOLDING COURT
AUGER-ALIASSIME,
PHOTOGRAPHED
AT LONDON’S
HURLINGHAM CLUB.
GROOMING, EMMA
WHITE TURLE.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
ANTON CORBIJN.
SITTINGS EDITOR:
PHYLLIS POSNICK.
VLIFE
PRODUCED BY IMAGE PARTNERSHIP PRODUCTION
