Camera sign don’t lie.
Valentin Vacherot entered this year’s Shanghai Masters as the world No.204. He will leave as a card carrying member of the ATP’s Top 100 for the first time.
After his emotional 2-6, 7-6(4) 6-4 triumph over 11th-ranked Holger Rune, the Monagesque can celebrate his new status and look forward to his first Masters semifinal.
Vacherot, the cousin of France’s Arthur Rinderknech, who is also alive in the draw and will contest a quarterfinal against Jiri Lehecka on Friday in Shanghai, is the second lowest ranked player to reach a Masters 1000 semifinal and the first player from Monaco to ever play an ATP semifinal.
“I came as an alternate, I wasn’t sure I would even play the qualifying,” he said on court after his sixth Top 50 win of the season, and his biggest of the bunch.
“I don’t know what to say, this is just unbelievable. The last win already meant so much to me, this one means even more. There’s the win. There’s also the Top 100 ranking. It’s just a step. I tried to not look at the ranking this whole tournament, but unfortunately for this one, I read that if I won I’d be breaking the Top 100.”
Rune took an early lead but struggled to match Vacherot’s physicality and was overcome by bouts of cramping late in the third set as the 26-year-old inched away for his biggest career win.
“It’s just unbelievable. I cannot wait for Thursday, is it? I don’t even know what day it is. I’m so happy and I’m just living the dream,” Vacherot said with a smile.
Vacherot got as high as 116 in the rankings last spring, but saw his progress curtailed by injuries – he only played three matches from June through December and ended up lamenting his poor luck.
“This is just a step of course. I don’t want to stop my career right now. Last year for five months I got injured, 30 points away from the Top 100 when I was already playing the best tennis of my life. I had almost no points to defend and I was sitting on the couch all day thinking about if I just had one good result, or two, I would be Top 100,” he admitted.
“Coming back from six months out is not easy, you just have to fight your way through a little bit. I had another setback this summer. This is the last way that I ever thought I would be breaking the Top 100, having a huge run like this, but it’s probably the easiest way though.”
On Thursday he continued to play confident tennis against the tour’s elite, earning his fourth Top 50 win of the week (also No.31 Griekspoor, No.23 Machac and No.14 Bublik).
“Today I was so shocked about how he was defending,” Vacherot said of Rune. “Getting points that I would win against 90 percent of the guys. I would come in and think I was going to have an easy volley and he would pass me.”
“The first set was pretty physical. My lungs were screaming a little bit. In the end, what I’m most surprised about is that I think I beat him physically and that is just unreal.”
Vacherot will face four-time champion Novak Djokovic in the semifinals.
