Valentin Vacherot has become the lowest-ranked tournament winner in ATP Masters 1000 history after the 204th ranked men’s player won the Shanghai Masters.<\/p>\n
He beat his cousin Arthur Rinderknech 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Sunday local time to claim the first title of his career after a stunning run from the qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n
Vacherot, the unheralded 26-year-old, is also the first winner of an ATP Masters tournament from the tiny Principality of Monaco.<\/p>\n
He stunned 24-time grand slam champion Novak Djokovic in the semifinals to set up a final against the 30-year-old Rinderknech, who had downed four-time major finalist Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 US Open champion, in a remarkable semifinal of his own.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentin Vacherot, beat his cousin France’s Arthur Rinderknech in the Shanghai Masters final. (Reuters: Go Nakamura)<\/p>\n
Vacherot produced a serving masterclass in the third set, with three straight love holds and 15 consecutive points before finally losing a point in the eighth game with an unforced error.<\/p>\n
Serving to stay in the match at 15-40 down, Rinderknech saved one match point but Vacherot wrong-footed him with yet another blistering forehand winner down the line to clinch victory.<\/p>\n
He held his face in his hands in disbelief before walking to the net to hug his cousin and then rushing to his team box to share a long hug with coach Benjamin Balleret, who is his half-brother and is a former tennis player from Monaco.<\/p>\n
Balleret’s career highlight was a loss to tennis great Roger Federer in the early rounds of the Monte Carlo Masters in 2006.<\/p>\n
Nineteen years later, Federer was in the Shanghai crowd watching as Rinderknech clinched the first set with an ace.<\/p>\n
Vacherot secured an early break in the decider and then missed four break-point chances in the fifth game as Rinderknech got a reprieve. The Frenchman immediately took a three-minute medical timeout for massage treatment on his back and then his left shoulder.<\/p>\n
But there was nothing he could do to stop his cousin’s momentum.<\/p>\n
They never played each other before on the professional tour, with Rinderknech winning their only meeting at a Futures tournament in 2018.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valentin Vacherot has become the lowest-ranked tournament winner in ATP Masters 1000 history after the 204th ranked men’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[127472,753,64,63,128505,22960,927,3592,965,48376,85,747,37659,128504],"class_list":{"0":"post-208162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-arthur-rinderknech","9":"tag-atp","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-cousins","13":"tag-daniil-medvedev","14":"tag-monaco","15":"tag-novak-djokovic","16":"tag-roger-federer","17":"tag-shanghai-masters","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-tennis","20":"tag-tennis-tournament","21":"tag-valentin-veacherot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}