How Stefanos Tsitsipas Became Tennis’s Mr. Personality

Four days before he began his glorious, drama-filled run to the finals at Roland Garros, Stefanos Tsi­tsipas took the court at a suburban Paris country club and started circling his arms, reaching so far that he looked less like a 22-year-old tennis star and more like a Ferris wheel that had just been turned on and was gently picking up speed. Today was shoe-test day. Tsitsipas was wearing a new pair of black sneakers from Adidas, his sponsor; black shorts; and a white T-shirt that read terre battue (“clay court,” more or less, and a French Open slogan). His shoulder-length, sun-streaked curls were getting in his face, so he called for a headband. While he waited, he took out a pouch and ate some kind of goo. Soon Tsitsipas’s coach—his father, Apostolos—had set up a quartet of cones, and Tsitsipas was hitting down-the-line forehand after down-the-line forehand, an exercise designed to improve his margins, cratering the red dirt so that it looked like the balls were landing on the moon. “He always wants to improve, no matter what he’s doing,” Nick Tzekos, Tsitsipas’s agent, said, looking on. “I was with him yesterday, and he was like, ‘I’ve created my own font!’ ”

Yes, that’s right: his own font. In addition to being the third-ranked tennis player in the world, the youngest person in the ATP Top Ten, and the subject of countless dubious nicknames (the Greek God, Greece Lightning), Tsitsipas has, apparently, been finding time to get into graphic design. Unusually for a professional athlete of his caliber, he cultivates extracurricular talents and sundry passions, remaining open to the world from the closed circuit of his sport. “I think growth starts from outside the tennis court, and then it goes into my tennis,” he says.

Born in Athens in 1998, Tsitsipas grew up in the seaside suburb of Vouliagmeni. He picked up tennis as a three-year-old at the local club, where both his father and his mother, Julia, a Soviet-born former professional player, worked as instructors. Stefanos is the eldest of four Tsitsipas children: His brother and doubles partner, Petros, recently joined the ATP tour, while their younger siblings, Pavlos and Elisavet, are on the junior circuit. From childhood, Stefanos was different: quiet, comfortable in solitude, as introverted as he is personable now. “At some point, the teachers were worried, and they even asked me if maybe we should do some kind of special test,” Apostolos recalls, adding, “He’s a dreamer.” Today Tsitsipas’s quirky disposition is one of his biggest assets, in addition to the blazing forehand, a killer serve, and unusual versatility on all of the sport’s surfaces. Apostolos says, “His uniqueness helps him to handle all the thousands of pieces of information that are coming in while he’s playing matches.”

The day before his practice session, Tsi­tsipas was sitting in a ballroom at the same country club, chatting animatedly on pretty much any subject that happened to come up. (In addition to English, he speaks Greek and Russian fluently, and knows a decent amount of French, Portuguese, and Spanish.) He had thoughts on taking a nutrition class on the online learning platform Coursera, for example. And on Matt D’Avella’s documentary about minimalism (“I feel like decluttering is good”). Not to mention essential oils (“I love lavender and always have it in my apartment”) and detoxing from social media (where he once posted competitor and friend Nick Kyrgios’s phone number as a birthday prank). Feed Tsitsipas a question, put whatever spin on it you want, and he fires back with a straight winner or a surprising little conversational drop shot. “There’s a salad that I find really underrated, and that’s the Cretan salad,” Tsitsipas says, asked about a tweet in which he called for the abolition of the Caesar. “I would love this salad to be more in the spotlight.”

Tsitsipas’s charm is on full display on YouTube, where he frequently shares travel vlogs with an audience of nearly 180,000 subscribers. (He does most of his own production.) Traveling, Tsitsipas has said, “solves a lot of problems, in my opinion.” What kinds of problems? “Well, just feeling anxious and feeling like my life leads somewhere,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like I play tennis and I offer so much to many different people that love the sport. But outside the court, I want to be able to create.” The most exciting thing that ever happened to him while traveling was meeting the World’s Strongest Man, in Iceland. The biggest disaster happened in Oman, when the four-wheel drive he was riding in through the desert almost ran out of gas. “The sun was setting, and, you know, we were thinking we were going to have to spend the night there,” Tsitsipas recalls. As for the wildest night, that went down recently, in Dubai: “I never drink,” Tsitsipas begins, grinning. “But during my preseason, things kind of went out of control.” There was Peruvian food, along with some Moscow Mules and Cosmopolitans (“not a very manly drink, but I enjoy it”). “That was probably the first time I experienced being drunk,” Tsitsipas says before adding, “I have a saying that I really believe, and that doesn’t translate only into my tennis, which is to go after every single day.”

One of Tsitsipas’s goals for 2021 was to win a Masters 1000 tournament, which he did in April in Monte Carlo (where he now lives), becoming the first Greek ever to do so. Then he triumphed again in May, winning easily at Lyon. Prior to his run at the French, Tsitsipas had made a habit of coming up short in Grand Slams: a late-round exit here, a semifinal there. But his focused performance in Paris, culminating in a thrilling five-set final in which he lost, just barely, to Novak Djokovic, put an end to the tutting of sideline second-guessers, while winning Tsitsipas a legion of new supporters. (His first-round exit at Wimbledon in June was, alas, a disappointment for the growing fan club.) “My goal for this year is to finish the season with a lot of wins,” he told me before Roland Garros. “I don’t know whether that’s 50, 60, or 70. I don’t care how many, but I want to be at the top of the Most Wins leader of the year.” When we spoke, he was at 33, having earned more than $1.5 million in prize money.

Last year, at a post-match press conference, Tsitsipas admitted that he “sometimes feels like my parents are too involved in my life.” Then, at his next press conference, his mom showed up and playfully lobbed a question from the back row (“Hi, Stef; now I’m following you to the press conference to make sure I’m aware how you feel”). As Tsitsipas’s game evolves, he is also evolving into his own person, trying on hobbies and habits to find out what suits. “I’m a grown-up now,” he says of his emerging independence. “I’m not a boy anymore. When I turned 21, I felt like, you know, things have changed.” With some help from his girlfriend, Theodora Petalas, an NYU graduate with a degree in project management, he even has some new outfits. “My wardrobe was quite weak, and I didn’t have a game there,” he says. “I wanted to start dressing up a bit, so we tried to create an identity.” The look: “earthy colors,” nothing too flashy; refined but youthful. “I started investing more in fashion, and I’ve seen that transition kind of benefit me a lot and make me feel better about myself,” Tsitsipas says. Onward, then, to wherever his curiosity takes him. “Things seem to be working my way,” he says. “If I keep putting in the same amount of work and if I stay persistent, I feel it can lead to a really nice place I haven’t been before.”

Grooming, Naomi Regan

Originally Appeared on Vogue