Top 10 Youths to Watch in 2020: No. 5 Auger-Aliassime

The new year is almost upon us, and there's a crop of young players ready to make even bigger marks on the world in 2020. Let's count down the Top 10 ATP and WTA youth to watch:

5

Felix Auger-Aliassime

Age: 19

Ranking: No. 21

For Felix Auger-Aliassime, 2019 was the year it happened.

After season after season of being the youngest player to do this or the youngest player to do that, this year, Auger-Aliassime became, first and foremost, a Top-25 player.

The Canadian started outside the top 100, and failed to qualify for the Australian Open. But he broke through on the clay in February at the ATP 500 Rio Open, where he beat Fabio Fognini, Cristian Garin and two others to make his first tour-level final.

Strong showings in Indian Wells and Miami, including wins over other touted risers such as Stefanos Tsitsipas and Borna Coric, got him all the way up to No. 33, but that wasn't nearly all he'd do.

In May, Auger-Aliassime cracked the Top 25 by making another final on clay, at the ATP 250 event in Lyon, France. He sustained a groin injury in that championship match and was forced to miss Roland Garros, but he'd win a third finalist trophy immediately out of the gate on the grass, in Stuttgart.

In his first time playing Wimbledon—and his first time completing a main-draw match in a major—Auger-Aliassime scored two four-set victories to make the third round.

It was a slow end-of-season, in which he suffered a straight-sets loss to Denis Shapovalov in the first round of the US Open and dealt with an ankle injury in the fall, but he starts the new decade 87 spots above where he was last year, and still just a teenager.

Come January, the world No. 21 will play in the main draw of the Australian Open—for the first time.