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Frances Tiafoe isn’t just arguably the best prospect in American men’s tennis. The son of African immigrants is the perfect picture of the American dream.
At 24, Tiafoe is the youngest American man to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals since 2006. He earned his way there by upsetting Rafael Nadal, but the journey into Wednesday’s match versus Andrey Rublev had started long ago — from parents Constant and Alphina escaping civil war in Sierra Leone to Tiafoe, his father and twin brother all living in a room at a tennis center that would change his life.
“Absolutely. I’m a son of immigrants, both parents grew up in Sierra Leone, born and raised in Sierra Leone. Came to the States early ’90s,” said Tiafoe. “They met here, had me and my twin brother.
“My dad, being a maintenance worker at a club, helping build a club ’99. My mom being a nurse, working two jobs, working overtime through the nights. Yeah, us being around tennis was getting us out of our neighborhood, my dad being able to watch us.”
That dad, Constant (Frances Sr.) immigrated to the U.S. in 1993, while Alphina Kamara followed in 1996 to escape a civil war that displaced 2.5 million people.
By 1999, Constant started working as a day laborer on a construction crew that built the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park (Md.
