Greece's Stefanos Tsitsipas might be next shooting star of tennis

Stefanos Tsitsipas has yet to win an ATP Tour level tournament. He started off the season still playing in qualifiers and Challengers. He lost a lot of first-round matches. He was the 91st ranked player in the world on Jan. 1 and was in the 200s in early 2017.

Now you need to know how to pronounce his name — sit-si-pahs.
On the eve of the U.S. Open, Tsitsipas is making a name for himself. The 20-year-old Greek from Athens is ranked No. 15 and his meteoric rise has caught the attention of the tennis world.

At the recent Rogers Cup in Toronto he defeated four top 10 players to reach the final: Dominic Thiem, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev and Kevin Anderson. He lost in the final to world No. 1 Rafael Nadal, who also beat him in the Barcelona final in the spring.

And here’s what Nadal thinks about Tsitsipas: “He has everything. He has a very complete game. Big serve. Great shots from the baseline. He's brave. He's young. He has everything. If he's able to keep improving, and the normal thing is he will do it, he will be fighting for the most important titles of the world of tennis immediately.”

Tsitsipas is the youngest player to ever defeat four top 10 players in one tournament since the ATP Tour was formed in 1990 and he’s the youngest player inside the current top 20. At 6-4 with broad shoulders and a beguiling smile, he has the tools to become a world class player and the personality to become the next generation’s symbol of the game.

His motto, of sorts, is, “It’s never gets easier.”

It’s something he consistently brought up on his run in Toronto where he continued to prove to himself that he belonged in the game’s upper reaches. 

“It all comes with hard work, sacrifices that I did in my life,” said Tsitsipas in Toronto. “It never gets easier. Every single year it feels like I ‘m getting better.”

And in doing so, he’s learned one important lesson: “That I’m capable of doing anything on the court, beating any opponent.”

Tsitsipas quietly became the No. 1 junior player in the world in 2016. He never did win a junior Grand Slam or an Orange Bowl, but he consistently finished high in the big tournaments and won some of the lower tier ones. Now, he’s trending upward in dramatic fashion as a professional and likely will be a factor in Flushing Meadows.

Tennis fans have come to embrace him and he’ll be quite popular in Astoria, the center of New York’s Greek community and right next to the tennis center.

Petros Georgiou is of Greek descent and an instructor at the tennis center. He recently returned from vacation in Greece and noted the passionate interest of the Greeks in Tsitsipas’ success.

“In Astoria more and more people are hearing the name Stefanos and everyone is starting to pay close attention to him,” Georgiou said. “In Greece they consider him a superstar already and almost all of his matches are being televised. He’s becoming as big as Marcos Baghdatis did for Cyprus when his career began.”

Tsitsipas has tennis in his genes, though born in a country where the sport is far from prolific. His mother, Julia Apostoli-Salnikova, was the highest ranked player in the Soviet Union in the early 80s, but feeling hemmed in by the old Russian system, her game never reached tour level quality. His father, Apostolos Tsitsipas, played some and the two of them were his early coaches. 

He credits his father for quitting his job to train him and developing his positive attitude. He credits his mother for giving him the mindset of a professional. “That’s what I believe helped me alot — discipline,” Tsitsipas said during the French Open. “Which in Greek culture is not that common.”

Georgiou became familiar with Tsitsipas when he played in the junior competition at the U.S. Open. “He is humble, hard working and an amazing kid,” Georgiou said. “As his ranking jumped he still remained the same nice boy.”