Joao Fonseca ‘turned down $1m offer’ and quickly earned treble that amount

Kevin Palmer 20 Mar 2026 7:24 PM

Joao Fonseca in 2025

The hype around Joao Fonseca has been building for many years and now he is getting his chance to prove he can take on the biggest names in the men’s game and challenge for the biggest titles in tennis.

Teenager Fonseca has been talked about a rising star of tennis for some time and is believed to have turned down a $1million offer to play college tennis when he was still developing his game.

The Brazilian opted to walk away from that mega offer to sign up for the growing college tennis scene in America and instead opted to become a full-time professional, with that decision already reaping handsome financial rewards.

Even though he is at a formative stage of his career, Fonseca has already banked $2,932,555 in prize money on the court and he has also signed up for some lucrative sponsorship deals and played in some exhibition events that have boosted his bank balance.

That decision to turn down a mega money offer from college tennis in the USA may have been bold at a time when he didn’t have huge money behind him, but Fonseca backed himself to compete with the top players in the men’s game and it has proved to be a good decision.

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His win against world No 9 Andrew Rublev at the 2025 Australian Open was evidence of his potential to rise quickly through the ranks and he pushed Jannik Sinner all the way at the Indian Wells Masters earlier this month, as he took confidence from that display heading into the Miami Open.

“As a tennis player, I can say that when we lose, we kind of feel sad or disappointed sometimes, trying to figure out what I did right, what I did wrong. But of course I’m happy the way that I played,” he said after the Sinner defeat.

“For myself, I don’t normally think that I need to be mad at myself when I played well, when I did everything good, and the opponent has the credit.

“I just try to figure out what I could do better. Maybe I could serve better in the 6-5 in the tiebreak that I had. I don’t know. It’s always an “if” that we, I mean, we can’t change the past, so we need to focus on the future.

“I mean, I’m happy the way that I played, like I said, but of course, there are some things to work on.

“I think the level, I mean, I can play against them. I can do some great matches. But there is always the little things, the little important things that you need to work every day.

“Those little details just super important, like when he played the important points, like how he deal with it. So of course, I still need a lot of experience, but I think the level is still there.

“I can play against them. I mean, of course, there are many more things to improve, but I feel happy the way that I played, because I felt the level was pretty close.”

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Matches against giants of the game like Sinner are huge learning experiences for a player who is proving he is close to competing with the best in the game, even at this formative stage of his career.

That decision to walk away from a fortune before he was even a professional player could have backfired if Fonseca did not make his mark in the pro ranks quickly, but this young man appears to have the firepower and mentality to become a star for years to come.