Jarry used that victory as a springboard toward others. It was revealing of his growing awareness as a match player that he not only upended the accomplished Ramos-Vinolas in Rio, but stopped the left-handed Spaniard again in Sao Paulo.
“That was awesome,” he says effusively. “He is a great player inside and outside the court. Last year I went to play on the Asian tour and warmed him up for a couple of his matches. It was incredible to beat him on his favorite surface. Right now I don’t have anything to lose. I was confident that I was playing well the first time I beat him, but I knew it would be much tougher the second time, which was a great match decided in a third set tiebreak. It could have gone both ways. The first victory over Ramos-Vinolas was my first against a Top 20 player. To beat a guy of his quality twice means a lot to me.”
What matters even more to this talented youngster is his heritage. The 22-year-old is the grandson of the renowned Chilean Jaime Fillol, who reached a career high of No. 14 in the world in 1974. Fillol was universally revered by fans and fellow competitors alike for his exemplary sportsmanship. He got Jarry started with tennis and remains highly influential. Both grandfather and grandson are fully in accord that the people of Chile are invigorated by Nicolas’s advancement.
I asked Jarry what it means for his country that he is so much on the upswing, and wondered what his country means to him?
He replies, “A lot. Everybody was watching me in these tournaments and I got messages from a lot of people saying that their cousins, their uncles, their families were watching me and informed about everything. In the newspaper, I was on the first page almost all week [in Sao Paulo] and it was a very big thing. My country means a lot to me. I play Davis Cup for them. I am very patriotic and I love representing my country. Now my closest friends are playing more tennis and I have heard that the younger kids are telling their parents that they want to be like me. It is like a nice responsibility for me.”
When I asked Fillol about the significance of Jarry hailing from Chile, he responded, “It is very important to him and all of us in the family. When he plays on the ATP tour, he feels he is representing Chile. He knows everybody is paying a lot of attention to him. He started off with pressure by being the grandson of Jaime Fillol and has always managed that well.”
Perhaps Jarry was born to be a tennis player extraordinaire. When he was only about three months old, unbeknownst to him, a life pattern was set in motion.
“The ATP had a tournament going on in Chile. They took a picture of me and made me a credential as a player, and then they kept doing that year after year.”
“With my brother Alvaro, we used to run that tournament,” recalls Fillol. “Right from the beginning, we were trying to show him the world of tennis—not just the tennis court, but the whole atmosphere. Whenever there was a chance for me to take him to Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, I did that. He was growing up surrounded by tennis, but it was done in a delicate way.”
Delicacy worked. Jarry grew up not just playing tennis but exposed to other games.
“I always did all types of sports,” he recalls. “I did soccer and even hockey when I was four years old and living with my family in New Hampshire for a year. But tennis was always there and never went away. Soccer was the last sport that I pushed away and then, since I was 14. It was just tennis”.
Meanwhile, Nicolas has two sisters and two brothers. His brother Diego is 15.
As Nicolas Jarry says, “Diego plays a lot and loves tennis even more than me. He is crazy about it. He plays all the tournaments here in Chile. This year will be the first year he will do a couple of flights to countries around Chile to play international tournaments, just to have a taste of it. He is tall and very thin right now and doesn’t have any muscles. He is playing 16 and under tournaments so he will get beat up pretty badly by some 16-year-olds who are big and strong, but he has a great mentality. I hope having me as an example will help him to go on a good path towards being a professional tennis player. It will be an amazing dream come true to play together in the future.”
