Auger-Aliassime turned nineteen on August 8th—the same day, as it happens, that Roger Federer turned thirty-eight, exactly twice the younger man’s age. Auger-Aliassime is not the only rising star in men’s tennis who is expected to win grand slams someday, but he is the youngest, and is already talked about in the same breath as Top Ten players. Two years ago, after his seventeenth birthday, he became the youngest man to break into the Top Two Hundred since Rafael Nadal did it, in 2002. In May, he became the youngest man to enter the Top Twenty-five since Lleyton Hewitt did it, in 1999. (He’s now at No. 19.) “He’s probably the one that I like the most from the young generation, as a tennis player and as a person, I think,” Djokovic said when asked about him, in July. In late 2017, Federer invited Auger-Aliassime to train with him in Dubai for a couple of weeks, offering not much in the way of advice but something potentially more valuable: a close view of his own example. “I was mainly surprised by how hard he works,” Auger-Aliassime said, adding, “If he does that at thirty-seven, well, I had better start working, too.”

The larger public got its first real look at Auger-Aliassime last year, at the U.S. Open, when he faced his friend and countryman Denis Shapovalov, in the first round. For two sets, on a hot day, the players—at once intimate and contrasting—thrilled the crowd with a tight match. But then Auger-Aliassime brought on the trainer, who pulled out a stethoscope to listen to his heart rate; in the third set, Auger-Aliassime visibly began to fade. Down 4–1, his heart racing too fast, he retired from the match. The two friends embraced at the net, and Auger-Aliassime broke down, sobbing into Shapovalov’s shoulder.

He moved on quickly, in the way the young can do. His condition was benign, the match withdrawal necessary but not alarming. That night, he hung out with Shapovalov in Shapovalov’s hotel room and just “chilled,” Shapovalov told me. By breakfast, Auger-Aliassime was smiling. At the start of the year, he had broken into the Top Hundred. This year, he has made three finals and two semifinals. He twice beat Stefanos Tsitsipas, who is only two years older than Auger-Aliassime but is already ranked fifth in the world. After the second time, Tsitsipas called him “the most difficult opponent I’ve ever faced.” He added, “I’m sure if he ever gets the difficult chance to play Nadal, Djokovic, or Federer, he’s going to beat them, for sure.” Auger-Aliassime lost to Nadal a few weeks later.

When Wimbledon rolled around, the oddsmakers pegged Auger-Aliassime as the sixth-favorite to win it, behind only Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev, and the three men who have dominated the game for the past fifteen years—Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic. Tsitsipas and Zverev promptly lost in the first round, leaving only the big three as better bets to win. “I thought it was crazy,” Auger-Aliassime told me a month later, on a hot evening in Washington, D.C. He laughed. “I was telling my coaches, ‘People need to relax.’ ” Prior to Wimbledon, Auger-Aliassime had never won a grand-slam match.

In truth, any bet against Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal winning Wimbledon was probably a bad one—and Auger-Aliassime knew it. He defeated Pospisil in the first round, and the young French player Corentin Moutet in the second, before being upset by another young Frenchman, Ugo Humbert, in the third. Humbert subsequently lost to Djokovic, who won it all.

When I talked with Auger-Aliassime about the hype surrounding him at Wimbledon, he told me, “I think people also maybe wanted a story.” For a long time, there has only been one story in men’s tennis: the three best players in the history of the sport challenging one another year after year after year. It’s a fantastic story, an epic—long and twisting, full of tension and surprise, with well-developed characters and distinct rivalries. But, to many in tennis, the lack of legitimate challengers—and the fact that the gap between the top players and the field only seems to be growing—has become disconcerting. Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal have won the last eleven straight slams. Except for a ten-month stretch, when Andy Murray was ranked No. 1, the world’s top spot has been held by Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal since February, 2004. (Auger-Aliassime was three years old then.) No player currently under the age of thirty has ever won a major title. Dominic Thiem is the only player born after 1990 even to make a grand-slam final or semifinal.