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The first chants of “FON! SE! CA!” started up shortly before noon, and it’s fair to say Joao Fonseca was in need of all the encouragement he could get. For half an hour the Brazilian No 24 seed had been slapped around to the point of mockery. The world No 132 Roman Safiullin of Russia, a quarter-finalist here in 2023, was standing daringly close to the baseline, taking the ball early, teasing him with immaculate drop shots. Now he was 5-3 up and serving for the first set, but three set points had come and gone. Right on cue, with the match at its first moment of crisis, the aural cavalry made its move.

And whenever Fonseca plays, wherever he happens to be, noise tends to follow. Ever since early 2024, when the Rio de Janeiro native reached the quarter-finals of his home tournament at the age of just 17, a kind of madness has built around him: a travelling army of Brazilians and Brazilian expats filling the world’s tennis arenas with the fervour of the football terraces. They call it fonsequismo, and from Melbourne to Miami, no court in the world is immune.

“Brazilians are fun-loving people,” a man called Rogerio in a yellow shirt explains. “We like to make people smile.” Rogerio and his family have travelled to SW19 all the way from Fortaleza, in the north-east of Brazil, so they can watch Fonseca on the hallowed grass. Well, sort of. “We couldn’t get court tickets,” he explains, “so we just stood outside and listened.”

Perhaps the first real sign that fonsequismo had grown beyond your common or garden tennis fandom came last year in Miami, a city of 400,000 expat Brazilians. Thousands of fans in yellow shirts packed out the stands, chanting during points, barracking his opponents, ignoring all attempts by the chair umpire to keep them quiet. When Alex de Minaur knocked him out in the third round, he found his social media spammed with threats and abuse.

And as the lavishly talented Fonseca has risen through the ranks of the game, so has his following in the world’s fifth most populous nation, one that in recent years has found itself starved of sporting heroes. Its men’s football team has not won the World Cup since 2002. No Brazilian has won a Formula One race since 2009.

Meanwhile, no Brazilian has seriously threatened the upper echelons of men’s tennis since Gustavo Kuerten was world No 1 a generation ago. Fonseca certainly has the potential to get there, as he showed when coming back from two sets down to defeat Novak Djokovic in a Roland Garros epic in May. But of course he is still just 19 years old, still learning and honing his craft, particularly on this unfamiliar surface.

Back on No 2 Court, Safiullin is two sets up and playing one of the matches of his life. The speed and compactness of the game is forcing Fonseca into rushed strokes, messing with his footwork, interrupting the big booming backswing from which he generates most of his power. The crowd are overwhelmingly, desperately willing him on, and he knows it.

All of which raises the pertinent question of whether Fonseca’s deafening hype army are actually helping or hindering. There are times when their presence has, quite frankly, been a distraction. After a tempestuous defeat at the Rome Masters in May, Fonseca even took the unprecedented step of urging his disciples to wind it in a bit. “Too many interruptions,” he complained. “I love the crowd, but there has to be a small limit.”

But then tennis fandom has always had a weirdly devotional quality to it, as one might expect from an individual sport where young athletes are essentially elevated to ridiculous levels of fame while still in childhood. For players who carry the hopes of a whole nation, the pressure can be particularly extreme. Alex Eala of the Philippines is one of the most popular players in the world despite never having been past the second round of a major. Andy Roddick calls them “silos of borderline obsession”: the parasocial attachment that anoints global megastars long before they are ready, or even worthy.

Safiullin wins in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, and gives a tearful address, speaking tenderly about the multiple injury crises that almost forced him to quit the sport. Outside, meanwhile, the real action has begun. A tissue-thin veil of security detail shields Fonseca as he makes his way back to the locker rooms, pursued by a throng of fans and autograph seekers.

One family manages to break the cordon. Filmed by their parents, the children approach Fonseca, foist a pen and a flag in his direction, beg him to sign it. Fonseca signs it. The family whoop in delight, gather up their treasured memorabilia and march straight out of the gates. The time is a little after half past one.