Valentin Vacherot brings "new status" to Monte Carlo homecoming after piling up Masters 1000 wins the past 12 months

In April 2025, Valentin Vacherot recorded his first ATP match win when the wild-card entrant defeated Jan-Lennard Struff in the first round of the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. At the time he was ranked No. 256 in the world, and his encounter with Struff marked just his fifth at the tour level.

It will be a far different scene when the 27-year-old returns to the Monte Carlo Country Club to face qualifier Juan Manuel Cerundolo in his opener at the upcoming 2026 edition, which gets underway Sunday.

Vacherot earned 2025 ATP Breakthrough of the Year honors after becoming the lowest-ranked player in history to capture an ATP Masters 1000 title in Shanghai, memorably knocking off Novak Djokovic before besting cousin Arthur Rinderknech in the final as a 204th-ranked qualifier. His full-circle moment in Monaco will present one of the sport’s biggest homecomings this year, and Vacherot doesn’t try to play it cool when the subject comes up.

“Already I cannot wait. I think about it a lot. Really excited about this,” he tells TENNIS.com with a big grin at the BNP Paribas Open. “Last year with two matches was pretty crazy. With my new status, it’s going to be more interesting.”

The former Texas A&M University standout is enjoying his first Sunshine Swing experience this month. As he shared, his only previous trip to Indian Wells occurred during his days as a student athlete.

“I was here for the fall national championship in 2017. When I stepped on Court 7, I remembered my friend playing on that court,” he reminisces.

This is all new to me, a new experience. I had the level let's say for three weeks, where it needed to be to maybe be in the Top 20. Now the goal is to have it for 52 weeks. Valentin Vacherot

His maiden appearance as a pro in Tennis Paradise was one he won't soon forget. Vacherot and Rinderknech reached their first doubles final together in a run that included knocking out a trio of tandems made up of singles stars—Daniil Medvedev-Learner Tien, Djokovic-Stefanos Tsitsipas and Karen Khachanov-Andrey Rublev.

In taking the court seven times, including for a pair of singles matches, Vacherot continued to grow his visibility among audiences.

“More and more people recognize me at tournaments,” he notices. “Acapulco was pretty intense, they love tennis over there. Lot of pictures and autographs.”

Vacherot assesses that he’s been “stable in my results” since his big splash, posting quarterfinal showings at Adelaide and Acapulco, a third-round performance in his maiden Grand Slam event at the Australian Open, and pair of victories in a Davis Cup qualifier that saw him edge 10th-ranked Alexander Bublik to earn his nation a historic World Group 1 tie with Finland in September.

At the Miami Open, he picked up straight-set wins over Mariano Navone and Matteo Berrettini en route to a fourth-round debut. One of his goals for the season is to go deep again like in Shanghai, though perhaps Vacherot’s greatest objective is to show that his place among the ATP’s elite is one he intends to keep for the long haul.

“This is all new to me, a new experience. I had the level let's say for three weeks, where it needed to be to maybe be in the Top 20. Now the goal is to have it for 52 weeks. That’s what I’m training for,” he states.

“I try to practice as much as possible with the best guys who’ve been here a long time with the ranking.”

Heading into his hometown tournament, the Monegasque owns 31 tour-level wins. Fourteen of those victories have come on the 1000 stage. Talk about leveling up, Val.