Francisco Cerundolo has now beaten Tommy Paul twice in grass-court finals, once in Eastbourne in 2023 and once at Queen’s Club on Sunday afternoon, and both times he had to do it the difficult way. He trailed by a set and a break in the final, stared at the door closing on the biggest title of his career, and walked back through it over the course of three hours and two minutes in thirty-degree heat on the lawns in west London.
He won 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-3 to become the first Argentine in history to lift the Queen’s Club trophy and claim his first title above the ATP 250 level.
Cerundolo Claims His Biggest Title
That last detail is the one worth dwelling on. Francisco Cerundolo had previously never made a non-250 final. He was a player whose ceiling, on the biggest occasions against the best players, had never quite been reached. Sunday changed that, emphatically and in the most fitting possible way: by forcing him to find something when he was behind.
He did not just hold his nerve in the final. He held it all week. He came back from a set and a break down against Brandon Nakashima in the semifinal. He trailed Arthur Fery in the final set in the quarterfinal. He came through three-setters against Aleksandar Kovacevic, Fery, and Nakashima before even reaching the title match. The week was a sustained examination of his ability to recover and compete under pressure, and he passed every stage. He is only the third man to win both the Queen’s Club and Eastbourne titles, alongside Andy Roddick and Feliciano Lopez. That’s not nothing.
His reaction at the end said most of what needed to be said. “I still cannot believe it. I fought really hard the whole week. Every match was a war, and I think I got the reward. Winning this tournament, coming from Argentina, winning such a historical event on grass. I would never have imagined lifting this trophy.”
What This Means for Wimbledon
The Wimbledon case for Francisco Cerundolo is quite nuanced. He is ranked 27th in the world and has now won two grass-court titles in his career. His game on the surface is not built around a weapon like a dominant serve or explosive athleticism. It is built around something more durable: the ability to compete from the baseline across long matches, absorb pressure, and find the timing of the moment better than the player across the net.
That quality, displayed across five matches at Queen’s this week, is exactly the quality that translates into deep Grand Slam runs. He might not blow anybody off the court, but he will outcompete them across two hours of uncomfortable tennis, and that approach works as well on grass as anywhere else. His clay-court baseline game, which he brought home a title with in Buenos Aires earlier this year, adapts to grass better than most people credit because the patience and construction behind it do not change with the surface, only the speed of the exchange.
The concern heading into Wimbledon is a familiar one for a player of his profile. Francisco Cerundolo against the elite is a different proposition than Francisco Cerundolo against the tour’s middle tier. He’s shown he can trouble some of the best, but troubling is not winning. In a best-of-five format at Wimbledon against players who serve at a level Queen’s Club did not produce this week, he will need more than grit and timing. He will need his best tennis.
The realistic ceiling for Francisco Cerundolo at Wimbledon is probably the second week. A fourth-round result would represent a strong return and would be consistent with what a Queen’s champion ought to be capable of producing at SW19 a week later. A quarterfinal would be exceptional and would require a draw that keeps him away from the top three until late. But he will not win the tournament. His game, for all its quality, lacks the serve or the explosiveness to close out seven matches against the best field in the sport on the fastest surface of the year.
What it does have is the mentality, now confirmed over an entire week at one of the sport’s most historic venues, to compete in any environment, come back from any deficit, and find a way through matches that lesser competitors would not survive. That matters at Wimbledon even if it does not win it. Francisco Cerundolo enters the All England Club having beaten the defending Queen’s champion in a final he was losing, in the longest final in the event’s modern history, in thirty-degree heat with his family watching from the stands for the first time on British soil.
Whatever happens next, he earned this one completely.
Main Photo Credit: David Kirouac – USA TODAY Sports
