What’s Going on With Felix: Outside the ATP Week 10
Investigating a Slump
Things are heating up. What a wild week in Toronto. Tommy Paul beat Carlitos, Marcos Giron vanquished Holger, de Minaur made the finals, and “Italian” Jannik Sinner took his first Masters 1000 title. Hardcourt season is back, baby!
Do I think any of this has any major bearing on the U.S. Open? Not really. Carlos, a true student of the game, has already picked up one of Novak’s signature moves—throwing in totally inexplicable loses in non-slam events. With that said, I was a bit troubled his match against Hurkacz, blowing a double break lead in the third, even if you get away with it, isn’t great. And it seems to me, generally, that Carlos relinquishes break leads at a higher than expected rate. I don’t have any so called “data” here to back me up, but it’s one of those hunches you get about the best players. Like how Roger seemingly lost all the time when he had match points1.
That’s the thing about greatness—the margins are thin. As players rise in the rankings, the deviations that separate them become infinitesimal. It’s about the smallest edges. Who plays the biggest points the best. Who exploits a weakness with the most efficiency. Tennis pros are a bit like field goal kickers. A lot of this game is mental, and when you lose your edge, when doubt creeps in, some weird stuff starts happening.
That brings me to the subject of this week’s column: what the hell is going on with Felix Auger-Aliassime.
By the Numbers
For those who haven’t been paying attention, Felix is in the midst of a bad run. Like really, really bad. His record for the season sits at 13-13. He hasn’t won consecutive singles matches since Indian Wells. He lost in the first round at Rome, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Washington, and Toronto. Until he took out Mateo Berrettini in Cincinnati this week, his last top 50 win was in March. Lest anyone worry he’d righted the ship after four consecutive loses2, un-seeded Adrian Mannarino took him out in straights last night.
For now, Felix is still the world number 14, but his ranking is being held up by his massively successful indoor run in 2022—titles in Florence, Antwerp, and Basel, along with a semi-final showing at the Paris Masters. In the Race rankings, which just count results from the calendar year, he has fallen all the way to 48th, between the likes of Jordan Thompson and a very washed RBA. That means the pressure is on for him at the U.S. Open, but I can’t say his form inspires confidence.
How’d We End Up Here?
It doesn’t feel like all that long ago when it was Felix, not Carlitos, being heralded as the future of the ATP. In 2014, it was a 14-year-old Felix who became the first player born in the 21st century to earn an ATP point. The next year, he became the youngest ever to win a match at a Challenger. By 16, he was winning them, and he became the youngest player since Rafa in 2002 to break into the top 200. At 18, in 2019, he became the youngest ever to reach a final at the ATP 500 level, in Rio, where he ultimately fell to Pablo Cuevas.
He didn’t just have precocious success, Felix, even from his early teens, possessed a game that seemed poised to win majors. With a long, athletic frame, massive serve, explosive forehand, and solid, attacking all court game, he appeared to be a perfect model for the type of star ready to take the mantle from the aging big three.
Now, still only 23, Felix has put together a strong resume, but has stalled out from reaching those sorts of dizzying heights. In 2021 he reached the Wimbledon quarter and the U.S. Open Semi, then made the quarters in Australia to start 2022, the same year he reached his career high ranking of 6th in the world, but it wasn’t a seamless rise.
He’s struggled to win tennis tournaments. He is, for a player of his ranking, spectacularly bad at it. Despite reaching seven tour level finals from 2019-2021, it was not until Rotterdam, 2022, that Felix secured his maiden win at the ATP level. That is, to put it mildly, odd. Not to put on my tinfoil tennis psychologist hat, but it seems like a mental hang-up. It’s not like players worse than him weren’t winning (a lot) of 250s.
But Felix ended his title drought in 2022, where he took down four events—all indoors, none at the Masters level, but still. So how was that the beginning of the end?
For one thing, 2022 was far from a perfect season. He failed to make it past the 4th round at the French, Wimbledon, or the U.S., and only won a combined four matches across the three tournaments. He didn’t win a match during the sunshine double, either, and at his first go playing in the ATP finals he fell to Fritz and Ruud, failing to make it out of the group stage3.
Prognosis
So, to get back to our original question, what’s going on with Felix?
Watching his match last night with Mannarino, I was struck by something. Felix just looked flat. His movement was mechanical. His defense was porous. His errors were often inexplicable. After breaking Mannarino back to level the second set at 4-4, he lost the next eight points in a row to close out the match. It wasn’t fully engaged tennis. Maybe he has a lingering injury, or it’s possible he just didn’t really wanted to be out there.
The easy read here is that a prodigy, now nearing his mid-twenties, has grown disaffected and is drifting from the game. I think we can push for a deeper reading of this situation. Felix Auger-Aliassime might just not be what the tennis media wanted him, for a long time, to be. This just isn’t a guy who is going to win majors. In fact, I think his indoor run in 2022 and some major draws that broke right in 2021, obscured what the computer at UTR has said for a while—he’s probably somewhere between the 15-25th best player in the world. That’s really, really good, obviously, but there’s a dissonance between that reality and the expectation that has surrounded Felix for close to a decade.
I have to imagine that, for a guy who seems like a sweet, pretty well-adjusted person, it’s tough going out there week after week with that burden. I’ve also laid out the thesis many times that the best tennis players are either a little evil, extremely weird, or both. Felix is neither. He’s maybe slightly weird, like home schooled kid weird, but compared to the elite level weirdos dotting our game, that’s child’s play. The backdoor way out of being extremely weird (and this still can’t win you a grand slam) is to take a genuine joy from the act of hitting the tennis ball (Verdasco comes to mind). Felix doesn’t seem to have that either. He doesn’t even seem that into EDM or clubbing. I worry this isn’t the life he’s meant for.
If I were to look on the bright side, I’d say his 2023 slide might be liberating. Maybe being written off is what Felix needs to make a leap (or at worst regain his prior form), but, as Jack Sock, Vince Spadea, and James Murphy will attest, once you’ve lost the edge it’s hard to get it back.
What I do know, is that he’s not among my contenders for the U.S. Open. See you next week.
The three Novak matches come to mind, but also Thanasi at Indian Wells
Bad ones, too: Fognini, Mmoh, Watanuki, Purcell
He did beat an extremely injured Rafa