Auger-Aliassime survives – Félix Auger-Aliassime’s opening match at the French Open stretched to four hours, 16 minutes against Daniel Altmaier—exactly the kind of test he says he’s learned to face without drifting away from his job. With a knee injury shaping his last seasons, a rising
PARIS — Four hours, 16 minutes is a long time to stare at the edge of quitting.
Félix Auger-Aliassime did it anyway—Thursday night tennis logic turned into endurance, then into a final burst of nerve. His first match at the French Open. a Tuesday evening duel against Daniel Altmaier of Germany. turned into a five-set saga that ended 4-6. 6-4. 4-6. 6-1. 7-6(7). He came back from a set down twice, and from down a break of serve in the final set. The obvious danger was there: the thoughts that he could “call it a night. ” to look ahead to the grass. a surface far more hospitable to his power game.
He didn’t.
In a news conference before the tournament. Auger-Aliassime spoke with the kind of clarity you only hear when a player is trying to name what’s changed. “I think it’s the first time that I’ve asked myself what player do I feel like?” he said. He tied his identity to a ranking he knows can vanish just as quickly in tennis. “I am who I am. I believe I am a good tennis player. Obviously Carlos is not here, so that’s why I’m fourth seed and not fifth. I’m currently fifth in the world, and I’ve worked for my spot there.”.
Carlos Alcaraz not being in the picture matters because it changes the order above him. Auger-Aliassime sits in a tiny. high-pressure pocket: three of the four people ahead of him are Carlos Alcaraz. Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic. The fourth is Alexander Zverev. who is arguably the best active men’s player to have never won a Grand Slam. despite reaching three major finals. It is a lofty spot—and one that has held plenty of names before they stalled.
Taylor Fritz. Jack Draper. Andrey Rublev. Lorenzo Musetti. Holger Rune. Ben Shelton. All of them have been highly touted. all of them have run into what can feel like an impenetrable ceiling—tied to the top three’s domination of the Grand Slams and Zverev’s consistency in getting to their final stages.
Auger-Aliassime’s place in that conversation is different because of what he’s already survived. He spent 2023 and 2024 managing a knee injury while Alcaraz, and then Sinner, staged a takeover. Federic Fontag. the veteran coach who started working with Auger-Aliassime in 2017 and took on a full-time role in 2020. described the real difference as stubborn belief.
“He never lost the belief,” Fontag said.
Belief, though, doesn’t erase physics. Auger-Aliassime has had to learn that climbing to the top takes the right version of the sport—not just the same tools. used harder. He rose by playing the version of tennis he thought he needed to topple Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic. Since his first descent. he has learned that getting to the top in the Sinner and Alcaraz era needs something different.
And he has lived with expectations for so long that he can still remember when it began. “I was kind of, you know, put with high expectations from 14, 15-years old,” Auger-Aliassime said during a recent interview.
Seven years ago. when Auger-Aliassime played a 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals of Queen’s—Wimbledon’s prestigious warm-up tournament—former world No. 4 Greg Rusedski predicted that Auger-Aliassime and Tsitsipas would meet in 15 Grand Slam finals during their careers. That prophecy hasn’t aged so well.
Still. Auger-Aliassime is carrying his own comeback physics now. built around the serve and the forehand. and tested by how quickly tennis punishments arrive when you slip. The gulf between Carlos Alcaraz at No. 2 and Zverev at No. 3 is more than 6,000 rankings points—“That’s three Grand Slam titles and change.”.
On Monday, Taylor Shelton moved 20 points ahead of Auger-Aliassime, bumping him to No. 6. Just 730 points separate Auger-Aliassime and Alexander Bublik at No. 10. With the draw at Roland Garros becoming more open by the day. there is likely to be shuffling when the red clay settles on Court Philippe-Chatrier in 10 days’ time.
Fontag said the biggest threat to players like Auger-Aliassime does not come from the peers at the very top. It comes from the thin margins below. “If you are between 5 and 10 percent under your level one day, you can lose to the No. 60 or 70,” Fontag said.
Auger-Aliassime hasn’t been in that zip code since 2019. But early 2024, he was closer to world No. 60 than to world No. 5. He was approaching an uncomfortable reality: a player who is more famous and far better remunerated than his ranking suggests he should be.
Off the court, the stakes aren’t only athletic. Auger-Aliassime is a Canadian with French and Togolese heritage, a rare profile with natural appeal on three continents. His sponsorship deals with Adidas and Babolat are lucrative and endemic to tennis, and he recently renewed both. But he also has sizable deals with major companies whose products are tangential to sports. including Rodgers Communications. the Canadian telecom corporation. and BNP Paribas. the multinational financial institution. Those are harder to earn, and he’s learned how to manage the pressure they bring.
He began working with IMG, the sport’s representation behemoth, ahead of the 2025 season. In March, he became an ambassador for Polestar, the Swedish electronic automobile manufacturer.
Asked about learning to keep the sport in charge, Auger-Aliassime said, “I’ve learned to be able to separate things where, ‘OK, the tennis I need to take care of, and then the deals and the attention and all the pressure that comes from the business side of things.’”
That separation came after three years that stretched beyond one knee diagnosis. In 2023, he worked through a ligament tear in his left knee—hobbling around the court for much of 2023. He finished 2022 by qualifying for the ATP Tour Finals, the season-ending tournament for the top eight players of the season. By March 2024, he’d tumbled to No. 36.
He never had surgery, but did receive stem cell injections to promote healing as he mostly played through pain for two seasons. At one point, Fontag offered to step back—or even leave.
“You need the relationship to be based on the truth and the reality and the needs,” Fontag said. He wanted Auger-Aliassime to not blame everything on the injury. “We have goals. If there is no result where is it coming from? If I can’t bring it, we are bringing in expertise outside of mine.”
In a game built around explosive serve-and-forehand power, the injury forced tradeoffs and adjustments. His style thrives indoors. which has pushed him into many tournaments and moments of the year when other top players take breaks—events that offer him the best chance to win. The last three seasons complicated everything: managing his injury. climbing back up the ladder while playing top players far earlier in tournaments than he had gotten used to. and altering his game to fit the changing demands set by Alcaraz and Sinner.
He remembers fundamentals as much as tactics—building a point. waiting for opportunities—the way Federer. Nadal. Djokovic and Andy Murray all did. “Amazing strengths, but they would kind of know when to use them,” Auger-Aliassime said. He pointed to specifics too. “Roger would use a slice to mix things up as well, on grass, especially.”.
He described how the modern game treats those ideas differently: higher speed, higher efficiency, defense that isn’t passive anymore. “And the defense also has become not just defense,” Auger-Aliassime said. “You’ll play Carlos and Jannik and you’re coming to the net and if you don’t approach really well. they might hit a passing shot that you don’t really have a play on.”.
“The speed is so much faster,” he added. “You need to be so much more precise with that speed to put the opponent in a difficult position.”
As his knee improved, his serve and overall explosiveness got back to where it was—and even a few clicks better. Progress was gradual.
One of his most telling indicators is how often a hard serve actually decides everything. He plays a lot of tiebreaks. where serving well at a crucial moment becomes a difference-maker. especially with a backhand return that can be vulnerable. His tiebreak record shows the swing of seasons: in 2022 he went 60-27 and was 32-23 in tiebreaks. During the two injury-plagued seasons that followed, he went 52-44 and was 24-26 in tiebreaks. Last year he went 50-23 and 32-14 in tiebreaks.
Trying to tweak his serve—making it more accurate without losing velocity when he was injured—helped him gain confidence. He also believes it creates uncertainty in opponents. “It makes guys feel like if you play Félix it’s going to be a tough day because the best thing you’re going to do is beat me in tiebreaks. ” Auger-Aliassime said. “If I play like that against a majority of players and I get broken against only a few of the best players in the world. I become very dangerous and consistent.”.
Through last season, he climbed gradually. Then the U.S. Open draw delivered one of those turning points that can change how a player sees his own ceiling. In the third round, he faced Zverev, the No. 3 seed. Auger-Aliassime was world No. 27.
“It’s a key match because you win that big match and then you beat the third seed and all of a sudden, I’m in a position where I can win the fourth round, I can win the quarterfinals,” he said. “These are matches that are tough, but that are attainable.”
He beat Zverev in four sets, turning the match in a second set tiebreak. He then beat Andrey Rublev in straight sets and Alex de Minaur in four, winning two of them in tiebreaks. He made Jannik Sinner work in the semis, winning the second set before losing the next two.
After that, the fall indoor swing arrived and the rhythm seemed to match his game. He won the European Open in Brussels, lost the Paris Masters final to Sinner, and made the semifinals at the ATP Tour Finals to finish the year as the world No. 5.
Now comes another climb—starting at Roland Garros with a second-round duel against Román Andrés Burruchaga. an Argentine who loves clay-court tennis and made the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships finals in Houston this spring. After a stodgy run of early-round exits that followed a title at the Montepellier Open and a final at the Rotterdam Open. Auger-Aliassime is looking forward.
“I’m happy with how things have evolved,” Auger-Aliassime said. “Sometimes I wish it was a bit quicker, that I was getting the results that I wanted, but I know it’s going to come if I keep doing good work.”
Félix Auger-Aliassime French Open Roland Garros Daniel Altmaier knee injury tiebreak record Alexander Zverev Jannik Sinner Novak Djokovic Carlos Alcaraz Polestar IMG