“If you can dream, you can do it.”
Those are not just the words inked on the chest of Thiago Agustin Tirante. It is also the life motto of the 22-year-old Argentine, who is living out his own dream as the newest member of the Top 100 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.
“I got this tattoo when I was 14 or 15 years old. It is very significant to me,” Tirante told ATPTour.com. “It's a lot for me because I have it on my body and also in my mind. I always think of those words.”
A mere year ago, Tirante was World No. 230. A pair of ATP Challenger Tour titles and two additional final appearances in the past 12 months have helped him rise to where he sits today, the final spot in the Top 100.
After falling short in Rio qualifying last week, Tirante found himself at No. 98 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings. Throughout the week, he was monitoring the latest results, eagerly waiting to see his Top 100 fate.
“I was checking it a lot, like four or five times a day,” Tirante said. “I was nervous because [Duje] Ajdukovic could have passed me at the Challenger in Pune and then I'd be 101.”
A former junior No. 1, Tirante made early impressions on the ATP Challenger Tour. In 2020, — just a year after he was hitting with the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal as a sparring partner at the Nitto ATP Finals — he became the youngest Argentine to reach a Challenger final since Facundo Arguello in 2011.
Tirante has since made big strides on the Challenger circuit, securing three titles at that level and learning valuable lessons along the way.
“Those tournaments are a very hard level. As you can see, guys like [Mariano] Navone, [Jakub] Mensik, all those players that play at that level, we can play at the ATP level too,” Tirante said. “There's a very small difference between the Challenger Tour and the ATP. We all have a good level to push the best players in the world.
“I think all the years I've played the Challenger Tour, it’s been a great evolution for me mentally and physically. There's so much to learn. I started Challengers when I was 18 or 19 so it was four or five years that I learned at this level.”
Hailing from La Plata, situated south of Buenos Aires and the shared hometown of World No. 27 Tomas Martin Etcheverry, Tirante first started playing tennis at a club which his grandfather purchased two decades ago. Guided by his aunts, who were tennis coaches, Tirante embraced the sport wholeheartedly at the age of nine, despite being involved in swimming and basketball.
The hard work and dedication has paid off. Today, Tirante can call himself one of the Top 100 tennis players among the eight billion people in the world.
“It is the goal of all players when you start to play to be one of the Top 100 players in the whole world,” Tirante said. “I am grateful I can do it now at the beginning of the year so I have more tournaments to move up a little bit more.”
Tirante will have a chance to continue his ascent up the Pepperstone ATP Rankings this week by competing at the Movistar Chile Open in Santiago. Competing in just his fifth tour-level event, Tirante opens against Brazilian teen Joao Fonseca.
Though it will be their first meeting on the ATP Tour, Fonseca and Tirante clashed on the ATP Challenger Tour 15 months ago, when Fonseca was playing his first tournament at that level. The Brazilian defeated Tirante in straights in Sao Leopoldo and built upon his momentum, following that victory by ousting Mariano Navone, who got his piece of revenge against the #NextGenATP star in last week’s Rio de Janeiro quarter-finals.
Navone’s countryman Tirante will be hoping for a similar parallel on Tuesday.
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