He made some inquires in Spain, where red clay is also the favored surface, but did not get any timely responses. By chance, a friend of his knew Pablo Bianchi, a former pro who coached players in Argentina. When Donaldson reached out to him, Bianchi responded to come on down.

“All the other kids and the coaches were so welcoming to Jared,” Courtney Donaldson said. “They kind of adopted him as one of their own. It was really nice to see.”

Jared could have trained in the United States, but his father felt he needed to work extensively on clay, which can be difficult to find there.

“Everyone is different,” Jared Donaldson said. “And this was the best thing for me as an individual player. For someone else, it might be something else completely. But I needed it, and it worked out really well.”

The Donaldsons rented a small place in a working-class area of the Núñez neighborhood of Buenos Aires, which soon became infested with particles of red clay. Jared usually trained twice a day and took high school classes online, he said. (He had been home-schooled since the fifth grade, his father said.)

They went out to dinner, tucking into luscious grilled steaks and savory empanadas, and gradually learned enough Spanish to get by. One of Jared’s cultural takeaways was that “in Argentina, it took them two hours to drink a small coffee,” he said.

After a few months, Jared’s mother, Rebecca, would visit, and his father would return to Rhode Island to be with Jared’s sister.