{"id":196270,"date":"2025-10-13T04:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T04:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/196270\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T04:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T04:09:08","slug":"valentin-vacherot-beats-cousin-arthur-rinderknech-to-win-shanghai-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/196270\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentin Vacherot beats cousin Arthur Rinderknech to win Shanghai Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHANGHAI — Valentin Vacherot<\/a> beat his cousin Arthur Rinderknech<\/a> 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Sunday to win the Shanghai Masters for the first title of his career after a stunning run from the qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n

The 204th-ranked Vacherot, an unheralded 26-year-old, was the lowest-ranked tournament winner in ATP Masters 1000 history — and the first from the tiny Principality of Monaco.<\/p>\n

It was quite a performance too.<\/p>\n

He stunned 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic<\/a> in the semifinals to set up a final against the 30-year-old Rinderknech, who had downed four-time major finalist Daniil Medvedev<\/a>, the 2021 US Open champion, in a remarkable semifinal of his own.<\/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 rushed to his team box to share a long hug with coach Benjamin Balleret<\/a>, who is his half-brother and a former tennis player from Monaco.<\/p>\n

Balleret’s career highlight was a defeat to tennis great Roger Federer<\/a> 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 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANGHAI — Valentin Vacherot beat his cousin Arthur Rinderknech 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Sunday to win the Shanghai…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-196270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}