Camilo Ugo Carabelli ended Ga\u00ebl Monfils\u2019s final Madrid Open with a 6-3, 6-4 victory on Thursday evening, but the Argentine was not the story, and he would have been the first to say so.<\/p>\n
Monfils, 39, ranked No 200 and playing on a wildcard in the final year of his career, never threatened to overturn the result. On a season that has produced just three wins \u2013 his Auckland title in January, a battling win over Griekspoor in Monte-Carlo, and a first-round victory over Galarneau at Indian Wells \u2013 the legs and the level are not what they were. They are not meant to be.<\/p>\n
What Monfils has brought to Madrid this week, and to every court he has walked onto in 2026, is something harder to quantify. He has played this tournament since 2003. He will not play it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy only real goal for the year ahead is simple \u2013 to enjoy every minute, and to play each match like it\u2019s my last,\u201d<\/a> Monfils said<\/a> when he announced his retirement last October. On Thursday, he did exactly that.<\/p>\n He is the oldest man to compete at the 2026 Madrid Mutua Open. He leaves it the way he has left every court in his career, with the crowd behind him, and everything he had given.<\/p>\n Ugo Carabelli will play against Flavio Cobolli (No.10) next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Camilo Ugo Carabelli ended Ga\u00ebl Monfils\u2019s final Madrid Open with a 6-3, 6-4 victory on Thursday evening, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-626210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626210","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=626210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}