In ATPTour.com's series, Sliding Tour Moment, a host of top players reflect on a career-defining experience, one that they look back on as pivotal in their journey through tennis. This week, Valentin Vacherot talks about the match that set him up for his surprise run to the title at the Rolex Shanghai Masters in 2025. Read all instalments of Sliding Tour Moment here.
Last year at the Rolex Shanghai Masters, Valentin Vacherot produced one of the most unlikely runs in recent tennis history. Ranked No. 204 in the world, the Monegasque came through qualifying and won the crown at the ATP Masters 1000 event to become the lowest-ranked player to win a title at that level.
But when Vacherot looks back on those two weeks, he does not see the biggest final of his career or even his stunning semi-final victory against 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic as the moment that changed everything. Instead, he goes back to the second round, when he upset then-World No. 17 Alexander Bublik 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. It was a win that changed the way he saw the rest of the tournament.
"It is pretty easy. The one match that changed everything was beating Bublik in the Shanghai second round," Vacherot told ATPTour.com. "The match itself didn't [immediately] change everything. But I had just beaten a guy, [so close to] Top 15, for the first time in my career.
"Instead of dwelling just on the win and thinking, like, 'Okay, I beat one big guy and my tournament is done,' I took it in another way. I was like, 'This is the way I have to play now, and I will just have to keep going'. And I ended up winning the tournament."
Vacherot had spent the majority of his 2025 season competing at ATP Challenger level, making the Bublik win one of the standout moments of his season to that point. He had beaten a Top-20 player, in front of a big Shanghai crowd, and suddenly found himself at the centre of the kind of attention usually reserved for the sport's more-established names.
"That was one of the first times, probably the second time I won a match against a big guy at a big tournament with a crazy crowd," Vacherot recalled. "After the match, it took me 25 minutes to get to the locker room in Shanghai. There were a lot of people there. I really felt like a tennis player there."
At the time, Vacherot did not know that feeling would stay with him. It was only later, as he looked back on the run and the interviews that followed, that he understood the Bublik win had marked a change in the way he saw himself.
"I didn't realise at the time it was a turning moment for me," Vacherot shared. "It sank in a few weeks and months after that it was a turning moment for me during the interviews I did. I kind of switched my mindset after that match."
What followed in Shanghai gave that new mindset an immediate test, but Vacherot turned one unexpected victory into a run that kept getting bigger. The Monegasque defeated Tomas Machac and Tallon Griekspoor to reach the quarter-finals, in which he upset then-World No. 11 Holger Rune. Then came Djokovic, and Vacherot produced another shock, defeating the 24-time major champion in straight sets to reach his first Masters 1000 final.
On the other side of the draw, Vacherot's cousin Arthur Rinderknech was enjoying a breakout run of his own. After Vacherot beat Djokovic in the semi-finals, the two cousins were set to meet for the title.
"It was just me, my brother, my coach and my girlfriend in Shanghai," Vacherot recalled. "And my cousin Rinderknech was also there. So we’re just spending all the time together and we ended up playing each other in the final. And we said no one from the family came during the tournament, even though we were doing well, we were just in our bubble. But in the WhatsApp groups, everyone was going crazy."
Vacherot ultimately defeated Rinderknech 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the final to complete one of the most remarkable runs in Masters 1000 history. The victory took the Monegasque from No. 204 to No. 40 in the PIF ATP Rankings, and a few weeks later he climbed as high as No. 30. But the rankings climb itself was only part of what made the result so significant. It changed his access to the Tour and meant he no longer had to fight his way into the biggest tournaments.
"I think the biggest change is just that I went from 204 in the rankings to 40," Vacherot shared. "And a few weeks after the season ended, I was No. 30. I allowed myself to know that I was on the bigger side of the Tour now. I was going to play in the main draw of all those tournaments. For the following season, that was the biggest change that I was happy about."
And he has made plenty of it.
Vacherot reached the quarter-finals at the Rolex Paris Masters to close his 2025 season, before making the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time at the Australian Open in January 2026. He then reached the quarter-finals at the ATP 500 event in Acapulco, followed by another breakthrough in April at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.
There, on home soil, Vacherot became the first Monegasque to reach the semi-finals of the tournament, eventually falling to Carlos Alcaraz. The result propelled him into the Top 20 for the first time. The results kept coming. But the work behind them had not changed.
"One thing that just sticks with me and mostly helps me is that I love playing tennis so much," Vacherot said. "It's just really easy for me to wake up every morning and go train. There are only a few training sessions in the year that I'm too tired for. I can count those trainings on my fingers.
"Sometimes my coaches need to take me off the court rather than myself, because I'm just out there playing. And even if it goes really badly, I just keep trying. I always want to play well."
That mindset had been there all along. The win against Bublik in Shanghai gave Vacherot the belief that it could take him much further than he had imagined.
Read more about Valentin Vacherot:
Vacherot: 'Your partner is really, really important'
Vacherot: 2025 breakout star adjusting to ‘wonderful’ life as ATP Tour fixture
Vacherot was this close to losing in Shanghai qualifying... 'Literally unbelievable'
Why Vacherot's fairytale Shanghai run was crazier than anyone knew: 'Is this real life?'
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