{"id":1312075,"date":"2019-07-03T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/just-18-faa-taking-flight-at-wimbledon-gauff-wins-again\/"},"modified":"2019-07-03T16:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T22:28:00","slug":"just-18-faa-taking-flight-at-wimbledon-gauff-wins-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/just-18-faa-taking-flight-at-wimbledon-gauff-wins-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Just 18, \u2018FAA\u2019 taking flight at Wimbledon; Gauff wins again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime returns to Corentin Moutet of France in a Men’s singles match during day three of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Wednesday, July 3, 2019. (AP Photo\/Kirsty Wigglesworth)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WIMBLEDON, England \u2014 Dealing with jitters early in a match is nothing new to Felix Auger-Aliassime.<\/p>\n

Being among the favorites to win Wimbledon? Considering the Canadian is just 18 and never had won so much as one Grand Slam match until this week, well, yes, that\u2019s not the sort of thing he is used to.<\/p>\n

One more victory, and the kid known to many by his initials, \u201cFAA,\u201d could be taking on defending champion Novak Djokovic. Not that he\u2019s worrying about that just yet.<\/p>\n

The first player born in the 2000s to win a men\u2019s match at a major, the 19th-seeded Auger-Aliassime progressed to the third round in his debut at the All England Club with a 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory over French qualifier Corentin Moutet on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can recall being 10 years old and playing (for) the first time away from home and being very nervous. Since (I was) very young, you kind of learn how to deal with this pressure, with the stress,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at different stages of your career, you face different times. Now it\u2019s Grand Slams. Maybe one day I\u2019ll play finals of these events and I\u2019ll be, for sure, extremely nervous. I think it\u2019s emotions you can\u2019t go against. It comes \u2014 and then it all depends on how you deal with it. Today, I was able to deal with it in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auger-Aliassime is hardly the only one contemplating the possibility that he could play for a major championship in the not-too-distant future. Much like Coco Gauff, the 15-year-old American who beat Venus Williams on Monday and won again Wednesday, Auger-Aliassime is fascinating folks because of his play, but also his age.<\/p>\n

Tennis has been waiting for quite some time to discover a worthy successor to the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic, who have won the past 10 major titles and 53 of the last 64. So there is a bit of irrational exuberance whenever some youngster comes along with the sort of talent and poise Auger-Aliassime seems to possess in abundance.<\/p>\n

As of Wednesday evening, British bookmakers were listing Auger-Aliassime at 25-1 odds to lift the Wimbledon trophy, behind only the top three seeds: No. 1 Djokovic, No. 2 Federer and No. 3 Nadal.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s remarkable. The Montreal native only played one Grand Slam match, and lost it, until this tournament. He had never been ranked above 108th until this season.<\/p>\n

But who else is there to rate right behind the game\u2019s dominant figures? It\u2019s just three days into the fortnight and the guys ranked Nos. 4-6 \u2014 Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, guys in their 20s all touted as up-and-comers \u2014 already are gone, as is three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka, who lost to 21-year-old Reilly Opelka of the U.S. in five sets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand that people want to see a new winner of a Grand Slam. They don\u2019t want to see three of us dominating the Slam titles. Eventually it\u2019s going to come,\u201d Djokovic said, then waited a comedic beat before adding with a smile: \u201cin about 25 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Djokovic moved into the third round by dismissing Denis Kudla of the United States 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were some moments in the match,\u201d Djokovic said, \u201cwhere maybe I could have done better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever you say, Novak.<\/p>\n

He will face 22-year-old Hubert Hurkacz of Poland on Friday; Auger-Aliassime takes on 21-year-old Ugo Humbert of France.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know if I win, I could play Novak. But then there is a match to play. Once the match gets going, you\u2019re already in enough trouble in the court,\u201d Auger-Aliassime said, \u201cyou don\u2019t really think of what could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

He boasts a big serve that reached 131 mph on Wednesday and helped him save 12 of 14 break points. His forehand can end a point when he needs it to. So can his backhand. And his returns were good enough to win the first point in 11 of Moutet\u2019s 18 service games.<\/p>\n

After losing to him at a grass-court tuneup event last month, Tsitsipas called Auger-Aliassime \u201cthe most difficult opponent I\u2019ve ever faced,\u201d agreed with the premise that he could go deep at Wimbledon this year and offered this prediction for down the road: \u201cHe can win Grand Slams, to be honest with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auger-Aliassime is trying not to pay too much attention to that kind of talk, saying that he cares more about his own goals and self-belief than any outside views.<\/p>\n

When a reporter asked about the idea that he might be looked upon to \u201ccarry the sport forward,\u201d Auger-Aliassime replied: \u201c\u2018Carry the sport\u2019 is a bit much. Obviously, yeah, there\u2019s a bit of a pressure. I think it\u2019s quite funny, because I think for a lot of players, when they play their first Grand Slam, they have zero expectations. No one talks about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

With him, that\u2019s not the case. Not at all.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime returns to Corentin Moutet of France in a Men’s singles match during day three of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Wednesday, July 3, 2019. (AP Photo\/Kirsty Wigglesworth)AP | AP WIMBLEDON, England \u2014 Dealing with jitters early in a match is nothing new to Felix Auger-Aliassime. Being among the favorites to win […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 01:35:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}