5/21/2023 0 Comments Tiafoe flashscoreFrances Sr, who had worked in the diamond mines of his native country, found work on the construction crew that was building the Junior Tennis Champions Center, the Washington DC area’s premier training facility located next to the University of Maryland campus in College Park. Tiafoe’s parents each fled from Sierra Leone separately during the African nation’s civil war in the early 1990s and settled in Maryland, where they met. The American’s extraordinary backstory has been well-documented in tennis circles for years, but Tiafoe’s headline-grabbing win on Monday in one of the few events where the US mainstream leans forward and pays attention – which earned him shoutouts from NBA superstars LeBron James and Joel Embiid – has amplified it to a wider audience than ever before. He will attempt to extend his dream one step further on Wednesday at the world’s biggest tennis stadium when he faces ninth-seeded Andrey Rublev for a spot in the semi-finals. By toppling Nadal in four sets and ending the Spaniard’s 22-match win streak at major tournaments, Tiafoe has become the youngest American man to reach the last eight at the US Open since Andy Roddick in 2006.
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