On a charged Friday evening at the Monte Carlo Open, unseeded home favourite Valentin Vacherot delivered the tournament’s most dramatic upset so far, outlasting Australia’s fifth seed Alex de Minaur 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to book a surprise spot in the event’s semi-finals. Fueled by the roars of a crowd packed with childhood friends who have cheered him on since he was a pre-teen, Vacherot withstood a tense third-set battle to pull off the win, breaking into the final four of his hometown clay-court event alongside the tournament’s top three seeds.
Born just a short distance from the Monte Carlo Country Club courts in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Vacherot described competing at what he calls “my club” as a once-in-a-lifetime honour. “It is rare for a player to have this chance,” he said after the match. “I am so lucky to have a tournament in my club. I can name 1,000 faces in the crowd.” The result caps a stunning rise for the Monegasque: ranked outside the top 200 before his breakthrough title win in Shanghai last October, he has now climbed to 16th in the ATP live rankings following his run in Monte Carlo.
Vacherot’s path to the semi-finals was anything but smooth, delivering a roller-coaster performance that kept the home crowd on the edge of their seats. He jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead in the opening set, only to let De Minaur draw level, before breaking the Australian in the 10th game to claim the set. De Minaur responded by breaking Vacherot twice to even the match with a second-set win, setting up a decisive third set that would decide the winner.
Vacherot seized the upper hand in the third set with a break in the fifth game, but nearly gave away his advantage immediately. He saved a break point in the sixth game, then survived a massive scare on his own serve in the eighth game: De Minaur stormed to a 0-40 lead, putting the home favourite on the brink of surrendering his break. But cheered on by the chants of his childhood friends in the stands, Vacherot saved all four break points to hold serve.
“I know myself, unhappily I do this so often, I drop a bit at the start of the game, then I recover, even from 0-40, thanks to my serve,” Vacherot explained after the match. He went on to earn two match points in the following game, but De Minaur saved both with crafty drop shots that just cleared the net. When the Australian tried the same trick a third time, Vacherot anticipated the shot, converted his third match point with a blistering forehand, and let out a roar in celebration of the biggest win of his career.
Vacherot will next face world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in the semi-finals on Saturday. Alcaraz was in dominant form earlier in the day, extending his clay-court winning streak to 16 matches with a lopsided 6-3, 6-0 victory over Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik in their first ever meeting.
Alcaraz broke Bublik in the opening game and held four break points in the third game, but failed to convert, allowing Bublik to break back and take a 3-2 lead in the first set. From that point, however, Alcaraz found his rhythm and won 10 consecutive games to close out the match in straight sets. “I started the match pretty well. I had points to be two breaks up and didn’t make it and then I lost a bit of the feeling on the ball,” Alcaraz said after the win. “I had to run side to side a lot, had to defend and then a few games gave me a lot of confidence in the match. I was playing aggressively and I played a great and solid match against a player that you don’t know what they will produce next.”
World No. 2 Jannik Sinner also secured his semi-final spot with a straight-sets win, beating Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-3, 6-4. The result extends Sinner’s winning streak at Masters 1000 events to 20 consecutive matches. The Italian, who had dropped a set in his previous match and noted his energy levels were off that day, said he was far happier with his performance against Auger-Aliassime. “I feel like it was a step forward today,” he said.
The final semi-final spot went to Alexander Zverev, who outlasted Brazilian teenage wildcard Joao Fonseca 7-5, 6-7(3/7), 6-3 in a three-set battle. On Saturday, Sinner will face Zverev in the other semi-final, setting up a clash between two of the world’s top four men’s singles players, while Vacherot looks to continue his Cinderella run against the top-ranked Alcaraz.