Last summer, French tennis phenom Arthur Fils was in a funk. A friend sent him a song by rapper La Rvfleuze that name-dropped him in the chorus - "Arthur Fils, j'fais du grah sur le court" - comparing his on-court noise to the rapper's own. The irony? Fils's career was soundtracked by silence: a stress fracture in his back had sidelined him for eight months, between his withdrawal from the French Open last May and his return in February. At 21, Fils is one of the few players with realistic ambitions of challenging Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, but for a while, the only person not panicking was him. "Now [my coaches] are very chill as well because they see I can play some good tennis and I'm still here," he says, radiating the extroverted charisma that makes him prone to theatrical fist-pumps and, in his younger days, racket-smashing tantrums.

Maturity has brought self-control, but Fils still leans on his team - like fitness trainer Lapo Becherini, who during a tight match in Madrid told him to "shut the fuck up" when he started ranting. Fils argued back, Becherini repeated the command, and Fils won. "When something is going wrong on the court, they talk to me straight," he says. His father, Jean-Philippe - a former basketball player from Haiti who emigrated to France at 10 - is the core of his support system, instilling a "different mentality" that's "not a French mentality." Young Fils trained on a decrepit court in Essonne, south of Paris, which he describes as "a disgrace" but credits with building his grit. Now ranked No. 5 in the ATP Race after a comeback yielding his first two Masters 1000 semi-finals (Miami and Madrid) and an ATP 500 title in Barcelona, Fils has revamped his game: longer service motion, shorter forehand swing, better sliding, and significant weight loss to protect his back. He's also not above calling out harsh pundits like Simon Dutin, who criticized him before Barcelona. "I was very happy to win the title to show him that he was completely wrong," Fils says. With the French Open starting this weekend, he's the latest French hope to end a grand slam singles title drought dating back to Yannick Noah's 1983 Roland Garros win - the last by a Frenchman or black man. His plan? Keep generating noise on the court to drown out everything else.