Update August 2025

Combining discipline in his studies with fire on court

A tiny but highly uncommon incident at the Toronto Masters tournament in July 2025 sums up the high esteem in which Francisco Cerúndolo is held.

It’s very unusual for a player to talk to another player during a match, but Cerúndolo’s fellow Head ambassador Alexander Zverev made a high-profile exception. At 5-4, Cerúndolo started suffering abdominal problems; Zverev realised something was wrong and – against the etiquette – checked in with Cerúndolo at a change-of-ends. Cerúndolo said he would try to continue playing for the fans who had paid. Zverev told him that sometimes “you have to take care of yourself”, and two games later Cerúndolo retired hurt.

Zverev explained, “He is an incredible player, but he’s also an incredible person. I saw he was extremely upset at 5-4, and I know that an abdominal injury means you can’t serve, you can’t accelerate on your forehand, there’s nothing you can do. He almost had tears in his eyes, and I just wanted to talk to him – he said the only reason he wanted to play on was for the people. I have so much respect for him, he’s an incredible guy, he beat me three times, and I don’t have a single bad word to say about him.”

That injury came during Cerúndolo’s best year on the tour to date, one that saw him rise to a career-high ranking of 18. While he was trying to cement his place in the top 20, his younger brother Juan Manuel was looking to maintain his position just inside the top 100. It’s a great family story – the best and seventh-best players in Argentina coming from the same family.

Tennis family shaped in the Vilas era

The Cerúndolo brothers were always likely to be successful in tennis. Their parents, María Luz Rodríguez and Alejandro “Toto” Cerúndolo, were professional tennis players. María shared her sport with a university career, and graduated as a psychologist. Toto belonged to the generation of Argentinian players who grew up with Guillermo Vilas as an unattainable role model; Toto almost broke the top 300 in 1982 and, over the years, became a passionate coach of numerous players.

The couple had three children, of whom the first and third are tennis players. Sandwiched between them is their sister María Constanza, who plays for Argentina’s national team in field hockey and won gold at the 2018 Youth Olympics.

Francisco was born in August 1998. Unlike his younger brother, he didn’t stand out as a junior tennis player, treading a more leisurely path to the tour. This was partly because of other motivations that not every player determined to reach the top finds time for, notably studying. As well as growing up in a family with a culture of academic effort alongside sporting talent, he went to one of Argentina’s schools with a dual morning and afternoon shift, a very demanding system that athletes in top training seldom follow. He then took up a place at the University of South Carolina in the USA, but after six months he decided to return to Argentina to dedicate more time to tennis.

Francisco’s evolution in tennis was slow, but exploded in March 2021, a few days after his brother won the ATP tour title in Córdoba. By then 137th in the world, Francisco reached the final in Buenos Aires, where he lost to Diego Schwartzman, narrowly missing out on being the first qualifier in the history of the tournament to win the title. But he was still largely below the radar, partly because Juan Manuel built on his title in Córdoba to qualify for the NextGen Finals in Milan.

A year later, Francisco again did well in Buenos Aires, reaching the quarter-finals as a qualifier, losing for the second year running to Schwartzman. That run saw both Cerúndolo brothers ranked in the world’s top 100 for the first time. Runs to the semi-finals in Rio and Miami meant that by mid-April Francisco had broken the top 50, and by mid-July he had his first career title, Båstad, and a place in the top 30.

Inspiration for players who want to pursue their studies

Polite and cordial with the public and with his rivals, Francisco nonetheless has fire in his shots, especially on the forehand. Raised on clay courts, but with a knack for adapting to hard surfaces, he’s a hard-hitter, but with some exquisite drop shots learned on the clay of Buenos Aires.

Somewhat surprisingly, he has yet to win a tournament on hard, but has one on grass. He won Eastbourne in 2023 the week before Wimbledon, to go with his clay titles in Båstad and Umag, and three clay finals in Lyon and Buenos Aires (twice).

Francisco Cerúndolo has been using Head racquets since he was 10. Indeed, the tennis academy run by his father has been supported by Head for almost three decades, thereby cementing Francisco’s (and also Juan Manuel’s) family bond with the company. Initially, Francisco played with a racquet from the Extreme range, but his current power emanates from one in the Prestige collection which he uses with an 18/20 string pattern.

“As a boy my idol was David Nalbandian,” he says. “I always looked at him and loved the way he played.” But there is more to Francisco Cerúndolo than just forehands and backhands. A fan of River Plate soccer team, he also loves chess, and has a bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Palermo which he completed via online courses while on the tennis tour. His biggest dream is to win Roland Garros, but for now, he is happy as the right-hander of the Cerúndolo brothers, the older and higher-ranked of the two, and a great inspiration for young people struggling to progress in the elite with both sport and their studies.

Words by Sebastián Torok and Chris Bowers