Lorenzo Musetti

Lorenzo Musetti is the one-handed backhand's last great hope in a baseline-power era — and the rare stylist who's bent the modern game toward his aesthetic rather than the reverse. Born 3 March 2002 in Carrara, the Tuscan marble town, he won the junior singles title at the 2019 Australian Open and reached world No. 1 in the ITF combined junior rankings before turning pro that year. Simone Tartarini, his coach since childhood, has never left his corner. The first jolt came at the 2020 Italian Open, where the 17-year-old qualifier beat Stan Wawrinka in the opening round.

The signature is that backhand — a single-hander he can drive flat or carve into a knifing slice — paired with a drop shot among the best on tour and the variety to turn a rally into a chess match. It's all-court instinct over brute pace, which makes him most lethal on clay, where time and bounce reward his shotmaking. The flip side has always been consistency: the same flair that produces winners produces unforced errors, and the serve can wobble under pressure.

The breakthrough was 2022, when he won his first two ATP titles at Naples and the Hamburg Open and cracked the top 50. He pushed further with a 2024 Wimbledon semifinal and an Olympic bronze on the Paris clay, then climbed into the top 10. His ceiling matches are against the generation's best — Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic — the standard he's chasing as Italy's second front behind Sinner.

He enters the heart of the 2026 clay swing ranked No. 16, the surface where his game has always traveled furthest — through Monte Carlo, Madrid and the French Open, where his one-hander reads as less throwback than blueprint.