Heirs to the throne, Part VI: Stefanos Tsitsipas

He’s the leader of the Next Gen – and he enjoys it

With Sascha Zverev having already broken through at the top of the game, Tsitsipas took up the mantle of Next Gen leader and it seems like he’s enjoying it.

Having risen from 91 to a ranking of 15 at the end of 2018, he is surely headed for the top 10 and there’s something about being top dog which seems to suit his character.

Having won his first ATP Tour title in Stockholm, his victory in the Next Gen Finals in November sets him up nicely for 2019.

With his strong serve, elegant one-handed backhand, superb attitude and hair like Bjorn Borg, he is set to be a star for years to come.

He’s a born leader

When most young players are asked what their hopes are for their professional career, they will say they want to win a slam or become world No 1. Most of them get nowhere near those hopes but in Stefanos Tsitipas, you have a young man who truly believes he can get to the top of the pile.

That inner belief is backed up by his results; his win in Stockholm, victory in Milan and in particular, his run to the final at the Rogers Cup in Toronto, where he beat Dominic Thiem, Novak Djokovic, Sascha Zverev and Kevin Anderson before eventually running out of steam against Rafael Nadal in the final.

He is already a Greek hero

Until Tsitipas came along, no Greek man had ever reached the top 100 on the ATP Tour. While Eleni Daniilidou and now Maria Sakkari have led the way for Greece’s women, Tsitsipas is breaking new ground for Greek men’s tennis with almost every achievement.

He would love to help to revive the Athens Open, which was held in the late 1980s and early 1990s and not surprisingly, he is immensely popular at home, as illustrated by one recent message he received from a Greek woman.

“She wrote to me, because of you, 71 percent of the kids at school choose tennis now. So I was like OK, I feel pretty proud of myself. I mean, no one played tennis before and now it’s 71, wow, so it must be pretty nuts when I get back there.”

He’s got Patrick Mouratoglou on his side

Patrick Mouratoglou, the coach of Serena Williams, installed Tsitsipas as leader of his new Team M, a group of top players who train at his Patrick Mouratoglou Academy and whom he hopes will push each other on to grand slam glory.

Having spotted him on YouTube, Mouratoglou, whose father is Greek, loved what he saw, in particular his character. “I saw a great competitor,” Mouratoglou said.

“You felt that he wanted the decision to be his, whether he would win or lose, and that’s great.” Mouratoglou says “there is no limit “ to how far Tsitsipas can go while Tsitipas says Mouratoglou is “for sure, one of the best coaches on Tour.”

He is the most tech-savvy of tennis players

If there were rankings for social media postings, Tsitsipas would be right at the top, as anyone who has followed his travels over the past couple of years. Not only is documenting his trips and experiences clearly one of his true loves, it also helps him to relax between tournaments and training.

He has his own YouTube channel, where he can be found vlogging on subjects as diverse as “meeting the president” (of Greece) to the perils of taking a New York taxi ride.