American men’s tennis scored a dispiriting first last month: there wasn’t a single U.S. player on the A.T.P. tour ranked inside the top thirty. Not since the computer-ranking system was implemented, nearly a half century ago, have things been this bad—though things have been pretty bad for some time now. The Championships at Wimbledon get under way on Monday, and it would not come as a shock if there were no Americans left in the men’s draw come the middle Sunday, halfway through. Sam Querrey, with his all-or-nothing serve, well suited to grass, reached the Wimbledon semifinals four years ago, but he’s thirty-three years old and has crashed out in the first round of this year’s first two majors, in Melbourne and Paris. (He’s currently ranked No. 60.) John Isner (No. 33), has an even bigger serve, which carried him to the Wimbledon semifinals in 2018, but he’s thirty-six, and his place in the tournament’s history is likely to remain affixed to the first-round match he played in 2010 against the French doubles specialist Nicolas Mahut, a match that lasted more than eleven hours and took three days to complete: 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6 . . . 70–68, the longest professional tennis match ever. Reilly Opelka, twenty-three years old and nearly seven feet tall, is also in possession of a thunderous first serve. At No. 32 this week, he is the highest-ranking American man right now—and he did win the boys’ singles title at Wimbledon in 2015. But none of the Americans who’ve won the Wimbledon juniors have gone on to win the trophy for adults—or, lately, even got close.
Sebastian Korda is the youngest American inside the A.T.P. top hundred, at age twenty. Americans eager to see an American major champion again are talking more excitedly about him than any other player. Andy Roddick, the last American man to win a singles major—the U.S. Open, in 2003—talked him up during a recent Tennis Channel broadcast. “I’ll say it in no uncertain terms,” Roddick said. “This is our best American prospect in a long, long time.”
In January, Korda reached the final of a tournament in Delray Beach, Florida. In the spring, he reeled off three straight wins against top-thirty players at the Miami Open, including one ranked in the top ten, before losing to Andrey Rublev, who, during the pandemic, emerged as one of the toughest outs there is on the men’s side. Late last month, Korda won his first tour tournament, on clay at the Emilia-Romagna Open, in Parma, and edged into the top fifty; last week, at a grass-court tournament in Germany that is a run-up to Wimbledon, Korda cleanly defeated Roberto Bautista Agut, of Spain—a semifinalist at Wimbledon the last time it was held, in 2019. (He also executed a tweener-lob winner that was a highlight-reel marvel.) So far this year, Korda has earned more A.T.P. ranking points than any other American. He’s a comer.
It’s not that people expect Korda to make a deep run at Wimbledon. His defeat of Bautista Agut was his first A.T.P. grass-court match; he won his first tour-level, main-draw match on any surface only last fall, at the COVID-delayed French Open. (He reached the fourth round of the main draw, too, becoming the youngest American to do that at Roland Garros since Michael Chang, in 1991.) It’s more that, if you want to attach expectations to any young American in the men’s game, he’s the one.
For Korda, playing tennis has meant entering the family business. His father, Petr, was a Czech star, winning the Australian Open in 1998 and rising to No. 2 in the world before testing positive for a banned steroid and retiring soon after. Sebastian’s mother, Regina Rajchrtová, was a pro, too. (His two older sisters have also gone into sports: they’re pro golfers on the L.P.G.A. tour.) Sebi, as he’s called, has the kind of childhood memories that come only from being born into a sport. He recently recalled how his father once brought home a Disney-themed racquet that he’d been given at a tennis-legends event in Orlando, and how the racquet broke in half when Sebastian tried to return a serve hit by Radek Stepanek, the pro Petr happened to be coaching at the time. By the time he was nine, Sebastian was watching professional tennis courtside, from a players’ box. On Instagram, he’s posted old photos from his earlier teen-age years: shooting pool with Novak Djokovic, posing with Tommy Haas after a practice hit.
The Kordas make their home in Bradenton, Florida, but, this past December, during the off-season, Sebastian spent a couple of weeks in Las Vegas, working on his game with Andre Agassi, who partnered with Petr for doubles back in the day. It turned out to be an advanced seminar in mid-match reading and comprehension, Sebastian explained. He spoke of getting from Agassi a taste of the experience he’s not yet old or seasoned enough to have. “He sees the game way different than most people, that’s for sure,” Korda said. “He reads opponents, just kind of getting the feeling for how matches are playing. Some of the stuff he thinks about, you would never think about during a match.”
It’s tough to know what Korda is thinking and feeling as he works his way into a match. He brings an equable focus to his game, one that’s built on a firm technical base and designed to win points efficiently: big enough flat groundstrokes, struck with enough control to minimize errors. (His only bit of flash is a headband he wears to keep his long blond hair out of his face; he says he got it from one of his sisters.) He moves with fluid assurance for a player six feet five inches tall, and, for now, anyway, he makes up with anticipation, balance, and length of wingspan what he lacks in lateral speed. His serve is getting bigger and better; his returns, too. There are no big holes in his game. Both he and his father, who continues to coach him, speak of measured aims and resolute patience.
The pressure will build. And the bumps and hurdles that all young tennis players eventually face—injury, fatigue—will surely come his way. So many promising hopefuls, for so many reasons, wind up residing for us in the perfect continuous conditional, half-remembered would-have-beens. For now, for Korda, there is becoming, and, for those watching him and urging him, there are few more absorbing narratives in sports.
