Tiafoe’s girlfriend was college star who had unseen role in King Richard movie
Frances Tiafoe will step onto Arthur Ashe on Friday for one of the biggest moments of his life so far.
He faces fellow American Taylor Fritz in the US Open semi-final – one of them will become the first US man to reach the final since Andy Roddick way back in 2006.
Tiafoe will have his family and girlfriend supporting him in his player box at Flushing Meadow.
It has been quite the journey for the 26-year-old, who is the son of Sierra Leone refugees and grew up sleeping in a spare office at a tennis centre in Maryland.
A huge support on his journey has been girlfriend Ayan Broomfield with the pair dating since 2015.
Broomfield herself is a former college tennis star where she was the 2015-16 ACC Freshman of the Year at Clemson, and won the 2019 NCAA Div I women’s doubles championship at UCLA.
She also had an unseen role in the King Richard movie starring Will Smith, the biopic about Serena and Venus Williams’ dad.
Broomfield was a body double for the actress playing Venus Williams in the 2021 movie.
On the role, she said: “That was one of the main things in my life that changed for me, and I realised I can use tennis to be in the entertainment field. I am on set with Will Smith, this is incredible.”
Since then she has gone on to be a content creator and influencer – with around 80,000 followers on Instagram.
“I have my foot in everything with tennis without being on court competing 24-7,” she said.
“I still love the sport and have spent 20-odd years in it. With the surge of social media, players can make 10 times more off the court than they were on the court. I can merge the two together.”
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It seems like they are the perfect match for each other.
“We balance each other out a lot,” Frances Tiafoe’s girlfriend told ATP.
“We can talk about tennis. I mean, I played tennis myself. So even just when we’re seeing the draw, and we kind of look at certain players, sometimes I can act as a sounding board for matches.
“I just feel like we just understand it and what it takes for someone to go and be able to compete at the highest level,”
Fritz and Tiafoe will face off on Friday night, guaranteeing a home player in the men’s final since Andy Roddick lost to Roger Federer 18 years ago.
It will also be the first all-American semi-final in a men’s grand slam since 2005.
Now there is a real chance of a home winner in New York for the first time since 21 years ago, with Tiafoe telling the press that beating Grigor Dimitrov due to an injury was ‘not the way he wanted to get through’.
“But, I’m happy to get through. Another semi-final here. Incredible,” he said.
“It was a really high-level match, I liked where I was at in the third regardless, but I didn’t want to end it like that.”
He added: “But you get to see me against another American so Friday is going to be one hell of a day.”
He called Friday’s match the ‘biggest’ of both his and Fritz’s life.
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“We have known each other for so long, we have played against each other since we were 14,” he said.
“To play him here in the biggest arena, in one of the biggest matches in the world, is going to be awesome.
“I can’t be more excited, I am going to give it everything I have got.”