Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic\u00a0will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.<\/p>\n
This week, a rising star and a tour stalwart took big steps, and two of the stranger rules in the sport reappeared.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n A big step for a rising star?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jo\u00e3o Fonseca<\/a> started the year with a bang \u2014 or actually a few of them.<\/p>\n The 19-year-old Brazilian, whose ferocious ground game makes him the most likely of his generation to join Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz at the top of the sport, won the Next Gen ATP Finals<\/a> in December, aged 18. Then he qualified for his first Grand Slam, in Australia, where he overwhelmed Andrey Rublev in his opening match for his first win against an opponent ranked in the top 10.<\/p>\n A month later, he won his first ATP Tour title in Buenos Aires. Fonseca\u2019s time had seemingly arrived. Except then it didn\u2019t. Followed by Brazilian flags wherever he went, he thrilled in a Miami Open defeat against Alex de Minaur but then mostly had a rougher time, losing a series of first-round matches as the other ascendant player of his age bracket, Learner Tien, started notching top-10 wins all over. Britain\u2019s Jack Draper schooled him at the French Open. The growing pains of a first full season on the ATP Tour took over.<\/p>\n Then on Sunday, Fonseca won his second title of the year and his first at ATP 500 level. He beat Spain\u2019s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina \u2014 who is still searching for his first career title \u2014 to win the Swiss Indoors Basel. The quick, still conditions gave him time to set up on his fearsome groundstrokes and let him do what he does best at 19: hit a tennis ball harder than most players can, for longer than most players can. He can do it on clay, as he proved earlier in the year, where his serve leaps and he destroys shots even above his shoulders. There is plenty of evolution to be done, too.<\/p>\n The win in Switzerland makes him the world No. 28, with two weeks to go in the regular season. He started the year as the world No. 113.<\/p>\n Now consider this reference point: At the end of his first full season on the ATP Tour in 2021, when he was 18, Alcaraz finished as the world No. 32, a magical and magically inconsistent talent. Sinner, then a mostly one-dimensional ballstriking savant, finished 2020 as the world No. 37.<\/p>\n Fonseca is right on track. He is keeping up with Alcaraz in another way: Trophy in hand in Basel, he admitted that he and his team had made a bet \u2014 win one, and he shaves his head. Any dye is pending.<\/p>\n Sinner won the other indoor ATP 500 tournament this week, beating Alexander Zverev and some cramps to win 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 at the Vienna Open.<\/p>\n \u2014 Matt Futterman<\/p>\n How did Ann Li earn her first WTA Tour title in four years?<\/strong><\/p>\n In a year when American women were seemingly everywhere at the top of tennis<\/a>, going deep in the biggest tournaments, some lesser-known players from the country have also been having the best seasons of their careers.<\/p>\n Ann Li, a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania, made her third WTA Tour final of the year in Guangzhou, China, last week, and this time she won it. Li, who had made two finals in the four seasons before this one, beat New Zealand\u2019s Lulu Sun 7-6(6), 6-2. The title, Li\u2019s first since 2021, pushed her ranking up to world No. 33, a career high.<\/p>\n Li had made the final at Cleveland\u2019s Tennis in the Land two months ago and at the Singapore Open in February. She made the round of 16 at the U.S. Open, her best showing at a Grand Slam. Who beat her there? Another American, Jessica Pegula.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t escape them. Four Americans \u2014 Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova, Pegula and Madison Keys \u2014 will play in the WTA Finals in Riyadh, which begins next week. Nine American women are in the top 40, two of them \u2014 Gauff and Keys \u2014 are Grand Slam champions this year, and Anisimova made two finals at that level.<\/p>\n Li isn\u2019t done. She is set to play the last week of the season at the Jiangxi Open in China. And why not? She is 31-23 this year in tour-level matches, her best mark since 2021, when she went 19-10, and a good run would get her into the top 32 and in line for a seeding at the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n Elsewhere on the WTA Tour, Belinda Bencic<\/a> won her second title of 2025, beating Linda Noskov\u00e1 at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. Bencic, who spent time on the second and third tiers of the tennis circuit late last year in beginning her comeback from the birth of her first child, is now on the cusp of the top 10.<\/p>\n \u2014 Matt Futterman<\/p>\n And do two of tennis\u2019 stranger rules need tweaking?<\/strong><\/p>\n