Francisco Cerundolo

Francisco Cerundolo is the standard-bearer of Argentine tennis — the country's and Latin America's current top-ranked singles player, and the eldest of a tennis-playing Buenos Aires family. His father Alejandro played pro in the 1980s and his younger brother Juan Manuel Cerundolo is also on tour. After a brief stint at the University of South Carolina, he turned pro in 2018 and ground his way up through the Futures and Challenger circuits before announcing himself at home: ranked outside the top 300, he reached the final at the 2021 Cordoba event in only his second ATP main-draw appearance.

The game is built around the forehand — a heavy, early-strike weapon he hits with one of the bigger cuts on tour, generating pace and shape that punishes short balls and pulls opponents off the court. It's a clay-bred baseline style, but with enough first-strike venom to translate to hard courts. The questions sit on the other wing and on the serve under pressure; when the forehand misfires, the floor can drop out of a set quickly. At his best, he turns rallies into a forehand-pattern chess match few mid-tier opponents can survive.

The defining run came at the 2024 French Open, where he reached the quarterfinals — his deepest Slam result — before falling to Casper Ruud. He's banked Masters-level scalps on the bigger clay stages at the Madrid Open and Italian Open, and has long chased a maiden tour title that finally arrived at home in Buenos Aires, the result his whole career pointed toward. His career-high ranking sits in the top 20.

Now at No. 27, Cerundolo enters the heart of the 2026 clay swing — through Monte Carlo and into Roland-Garros — as the South American seed everyone in the lower half of a draw wants to avoid.