Tristan Boyer is nearly as active between points as he is during them. He shakes his racquet. He fist-pumps. He hops on his toes. He gestures toward his coaches. He says “Let’s go!” and “Come on!” in English when he wins points. Then, when he loses them, he says other things in Spanish. Things the chair umpire, and his family, don’t need to understand.
“I think when I was super upset, I maybe kept it in Spanish a little bit just in case,” said Boyer after winning his first Grand Slam main-draw match, in five sets over Federico Coria on Tuesday at the Australian Open.
It’s harder, the 23-year-old Californian said with a laugh, to avoid getting a code violation when he speaks in English.
Boyer is one of those rare birds, a bilingual American. He may also be the only tour player to have studied mechanical engineering at Stanford. And he’s one of the few from the U.S. to do most of his training in Buenos Aires. Right now, though, Boyer may be best-known for where he comes from, and where he still lives for half the year: Altadena, California, the town at the epicenter of the Los Angeles wildfires.
“My dad had to evacuate our house,” says Boyer, who is in Australia with his mother and grandfather. “Luckily it’s OK, but we have friends and family who are homeless. It’s really, really devastating to see.”
