Respectfully: I had gone many decades of life without considering the notion of “Monegasque” identity, or even seeing the word “Monegasque.” I knew what Monaco was, of course. But I somehow hadn’t wrapped my head around the concept of being born there and living there full-time. I thought it was just a place you went to in order to hide from taxation, board big boats, gamble large sums, watch fast cars, things of that nature. It was only in the past few years, when I began to learn about Formula 1, that the word even entered my lexicon, courtesy of driver Charles Leclerc.

In fairness, my impression about Monaco wasn’t totally off base: According to a 2025 analysis by the Monegasque Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, of its tiny population of 38,857 residents, only 24 percent are Monegasque by nationality. One member of that vanishingly small subgroup is the 27-year-old tennis player Valentin Vacherot. If you know the name at all, it is probably due to his freak performance at the Shanghai Masters last year. Refresher course: Despite being ranked No. 204 in the world, and despite having only won a single 1000-level match in his career, he won the entire tournament. Also, he had to beat his own cousin—Arthur Rinderknech, who was himself on an uncharacteristic heater—in the championship match. Vacherot became the first player from Monaco ever to win an ATP title, and the lowest-ranked player ever to win a Masters title.

What’s remarkable is that Vacherot has backed up that result ever since. With a sturdy serve-and-forehand foundation, plus great rally tolerance and movement at 6 foot 4, Vacherot simply looks the part of a top 30 ATP player and has given no indication of an imminent return to pumpkin state. He has improved his ranking to No. 23 in the world. Since the end of his dream run in Shanghai, he has been competing at a higher layer of the tennis atmosphere—tour-level events—and he has gone a sterling 16–9. That includes a quarterfinal at the Paris Masters, a third-round showing at the Australian Open, the round of 16 in Miami. 

That sterling record also includes the hot streak he’s enjoyed this week on his home courts. Vacherot was born in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which lies in France, just outside the periphery of Monaco. It is in Roqueburne-Cap-Martin where you will find the misleadingly named Monte-Carlo Country Club, which is not actually in the Monte Carlo area of Monaco, nor inside Monaco at all. Vacherot grew up hanging out and playing at the tennis club, which is a training base for tons of top ATP players, many of whom reside in nearby Monaco. It also hosts the Monte-Carlo Masters. That was his favorite week of the year, as Vacherot recalled in a recent episode of the AO podcast. He’d pray that it fell during his school vacation, so that he could stay on site from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., watching matches and getting autographs. Much later on, in 2023, 2024, and 2025, the local boy was awarded a wild card to compete in the main draw of that tournament. This year, he didn’t require the club’s generosity at all, because he was ranked so high he nearly had a seed next to his name—a measure of the distance he’d traveled in such a short span.

On Wednesday, Vacherot took down his first big opponent of the season: Lorenzo Musetti, last year’s runner-up at this tournament, who is now working his way back from the leg injury he suffered while up two sets on Novak Djokovic in Australia. Musetti isn’t yet back to the peak of his clay-court artistry, and Vacherot brought some of his best tennis of the year to complete the upset. “If someone had told me that my first top 5 win of the season would be here in the night session on this center court I’ve been hitting on since I’m 6 years, [I’d say] nothing can beat that,” Vacherot said after the win, which he spent riling up the home crowd.

For this one stop on the tour, Vacherot is the marquee name, and on Thursday it was he, not Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz, who got the last slot on Court Rainier III. His opponent was another Monaco resident, though not a native son: the great Hubi Hurkacz, finding his footing after a right knee surgery last year, who broke a seven-match losing streak here. Looking at their matchup on the scoreboard, it’s hard to miss that the Monaco flag is the Polish flag upside down. Vacherot came out sharper, racing out to 4–0 in the first set, only to lose it in a tiebreak. The character of the match changed with the passage of time. On paper, it was a battle of big servers, but in the cold wet reality of Thursday night, the balls slowed down and the rallies lengthened dramatically. Neither player could produce an easy winner; the tennis got scrappy and grunty. Vacherot, who said that he relishes a marathon match, triumphed after nearly three hours, to the delight of his friends and family at the club. He became the only Monegasque player ever to make it to the quarterfinal stage of this tournament.

“I’d rather win Monte Carlo than a Grand Slam, if I could, to be honest,” Vacherot said on the aforementioned podcast, reflecting on how integral this tournament is to his history. He’s now two wins away from realizing that unlikely dream. Perhaps it helps to have pulled off the whole unlikely dream thing before.