Every so often, the U.S. Open becomes a life-changing event.
Last year a British teenager, a few months removed from her high school graduation, showed up in New York for the qualifying tournament in late August. Three weeks later, Emma Raducanu left the city as a Grand Slam champion and global sensation.
This time around, Frances Tiafoe, an electric 24-year-old who has long been filled with unrealized upside, took the journey from virtual unknown to a player who could draw the former first lady Michelle Obama and the actor Jamie Foxx out to watch him.
Tiafoe brought his remarkable story — he is the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone, his father a maintenance worker at a local tennis center, where coaches discovered his little boy hitting balls against a wall.