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Félix Auger-Aliassime headed to US Open boys' singles final after upsetting the world's No. 1 junior
NEW YORK – At the end of a long, sticky, steamy day Saturday, Félix Auger-Aliassime found himself with a 1-1 record at the US Open.
But the win was the big one.
The 16-year-old from Montreal upset world No. 1 junior Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece 6-4, 7-5, and is into his second junior Grand Slam final of the season.
Later, running on fumes, Auger-Aliassime and Ben Sigouin faced the unseeded team of Juan Carlos Aguilar of Bolivia and Felipe Meligeni of Brazil and came out on the short end of a 6-3, 7-6 (4) score in the boys’ doubles final.
Auger-Aliassime also did TV interviews after the singles and after the doubles final and trophy presentation (where he didn’t even have enough gas left to try to hide how exhausted he was). Then, after a shower, more interviews with the print media.
If he made it to 8 p.m. Saturday night before crashing, it would have been an impressive feat.
“I think it was a great match. Having beaten him twice (previously), I was not expecting myself to win, but I knew I was able to win that match, so it was good to show up with a great level,” Auger-Aliassime said of the win over Tsitsipas, whom he defeated twice in 2015. “I’ve seen him play before against other opponents and I felt today he was more nervous, playing a bit tight and not letting his shots go. But I think one of the reasons for that was that I put a lot of pressure on him. I think I did my job well.”
Auger-Aliassime was down 1-4 in the second set before coming back to win it and take the match in straight sets.
He had just recuperated an early service break and was back on serve at 1-2 when Tsitsipas took a pair of five-minute injury timeouts, one after the other. The first was to have his left thigh massaged; the second was … to have his right thigh massaged.
It’s not a fair system, of course. Had Auger-Aliassime fully processed that his opponent was going to take back-to-back timeouts – it’s not something that happens every day – he might well have handled it much better, perhaps taken a bathroom break to get out of the heat and humidity to cool off just a bit.
When they finally resumed, Auger-Aliassime’s serve was broken.
“I think I started well. Served well in the first set. I had a poor patch at the 4-3 in the first, but I kept calm and got the break back. That was a good effort on my part. After that the important thing was to stay concentrated, serene; in difficult conditions like that it’s easy to lose your calm, and lose the rhythm a bit,” he said. “He really wanted to win; he tried lots of tricks. I might have taken advantage of the 10-minute break better, because it didn’t work in my favour in the games that followed. But it was important to come back in two sets because you never know what can happen in the third set, with that heat.”
At 5-5 in the second set, you could sense Auger-Aliassime loading up for a big push to do exactly that – avoid a third set. He waved his arms, roared and got the crowd – which had been overwhelmingly supporting him over his opponent, who is quite a nice chap – going to suck in a little desperately needed extra energy by osmosis.
He got the break, and served it out, and gave a lot of kids in the crowd high-fives as he signed dozens of autographs when it was over. Despite his exhaustion, there was no problem kneeling down low enough to fit into selfies with the kids; he gave the crowd a lot of credit for pulling him through.
Auger-Aliassime didn’t have much left for the doubles, though. After a slow start, he and Ben Sigouin (playing in his first Grand Slam junior final) were up 5-2 in the second set, and the final seemed destined for a match tiebreak.
But the two South American kids “VAMOS!!”ed and “DALE!!”d their way to victory, their energy level far higher than the two Canadians and the level of their tennis as well.
“Maybe we weren’t expecting them to play so well. We really didn’t see them coming but they played nearly impeccable tennis. They moved better than us, they took up a lot of space at the net and we were always on our heels. So, well-played on their part,” he said. “Maybe if we had more energy, it might have helped. But they had much better energy than us. You felt almost like they wanted it more than we did.”
Auger-Aliassime had another nosebleed after his morning warmup before the singles match, and it came back briefly during the singles match. He seemed to shrug it off quite well, though, doing his best to swat away all distractions to focus on the task at hand.
It’s a short turnaround to Sunday’s final, which likely will get on court about 3 - 3:30 p.m. and again will be televised on TSN and RDS.
Auger-Aliassime’s opponent will be Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia, another highly touted junior who has played some pretty epic matches against Auger-Aliassime’s good friend Denis Shapovalov this season both in the juniors and on the ITF Futures circuit.
“We’ll see how it goes. It’s a new challenge, another Grand Slam final. Obviously it’s really exciting, really motivating, but I have to stay calm and patient,” Auger-Aliassime said.
Kecmanovic is a year older than Auger-Aliassime at 17. But he has played a lot more small pro events. He is the No. 5 seed; Auger-Aliassime is right behind him at No. 6.
