{"id":94406,"date":"2025-12-22T07:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=94406"},"modified":"2025-12-16T13:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:06:11","slug":"jaune-munar-2025-best-year-missed-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/12\/22\/jaune-munar-2025-best-year-missed-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaune Munar in 2025: Best Career Year So Far Despite Many Missed Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite being around for around a decade now, Jaume Munar had by far his best season to date in 2025. Prior to this year, he had never won more than 19 matches in a season and never finished with a positive win\/loss record (his best being a 19-24 season in 2022), but this year he posted a 31-27 record. His highest ranking was #56, and he finished 2025 #36. He had never won more than three Grand Slam matches in a year, in 2025 he won six, including three in a row at the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/us-open\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">US Open<\/a> to make his first-ever second week appearance. He hasn&#8217;t managed to win a title yet and couldn&#8217;t make a second career final this year but, no matter how you look at it, it was an extraordinary season for Munar given the expectations. However, when you look at his level of play and all the opportunities he missed to do even better, there is a feeling that he might still not have reached all of his potential.<\/p>\n<h4>A string of close, heartbreaking losses to start the season<\/h4>\n<p>Munar&#8217;s improvement was evident from the beginning of the season, but he kept losing very close matches that could have taken him even higher. In Hong Kong, he made the semifinals after beating three higher ranked player, including Lorenzo Musetti (who would finish the year top 10), but he then lost to eventual champion Alexandre Muller from a set and a break up. Then at the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/australian-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Australian Open<\/a> he drew the #6 seed <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/12\/12\/casper-ruud-2025-season-review-disappointing-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Casper Ruud<\/a> in the first round and took him all the way to a fifth set, showing that he had the level to compete with Top 10 players.<\/p>\n<p>He followed it up with another excellent run in Dallas, beating Ben Shelton on the way to another semifinal and another matchup with Casper Ruud. He found himself serving for a first ever ATP 500 final, but he couldn&#8217;t close it out and ended up losing in the third set tiebreak. The trend of close losses continued, with a three set loss in the second round in Rio followed by another third set tiebreak loss against Kei Nishikori in Indian Wells. In Miami, he scored a sensational 6-3 6-2 win over <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/12\/05\/daniil-medvedev-2025-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Daniil Medvedev<\/a> (then ranked #8) in the second round before once again losing a third set tiebreaker, this time to Gael Monfils after serving for the match. Munar was undoubtedly playing the best tennis of his career, but <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2019\/05\/27\/jaume-munar-aggressive-mindset\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">his failure the perform in the biggest moments<\/a> was holding him back from even better results.<\/p>\n<p><a  id=\"FW8XzJbySAh3Ey-I76KawQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1231540242\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'FW8XzJbySAh3Ey-I76KawQ',sig:'8pyxL5I53ZnMerszdn9X2z1z7T0ESwEMHvOA1daF6bc=',w:'594px',h:'422px',items:'1231540242',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>A rough clay season with a decent Rome run<\/h4>\n<p>The clay season was quite rough for Munar, losing early in every tournament except Rome, where he made a nice run to the last 16 of a Masters 1000 for the second time in his career, losing once against to Casper Ruud, but this time in straights. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/french-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Roland Garros<\/a> would bring him another heartbreaking five set loss, this time to Arthur Fils, in a 4h30m match that he seemed in control of after bagelling Fils in the fourth set.<\/p>\n<h4>Mixed fortunes on grass<\/h4>\n<p>The grass season started in familiar fashion for Munar, almost getting a huge win. He was up a break on Carlos Alcaraz in the third set of their second round clash at Queen&#8217;s, but he couldn&#8217;t close it out. A close match finally went his way at Wimbledon, though, where he beat a red hot Alexander Bublik (<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/06\/21\/jannik-sinner-streaks-broken-alexander-bublik\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">who had just won Halle<\/a> beating Jannik Sinner and Daniil Medvedev and was seen as a possible dark horse) from 1-2 down in sets and winning a fourth set tiebreaker to avoid elimination. He followed it up with a straight set win over Fabian Marozsan before losing a close four setter to a resurgent Marin Cilic. This run saw Munar break into the top 50 for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n<h4>First Grand Slam second week appearance<\/h4>\n<p>The U.S. hard court season wasn&#8217;t very productive for Munar at first, with early losses in Washington, Canada, Cincinnati, and a quarterfinal in Winston-Salem, where he lost to #94 Marton Fucsovics. However, at the US Open, he found his best tennis again and made it to the fourth round of a Slam for the first time in his career and did so in dominant fashion. A fourth round matchup with Lorenzo Musetti seemed winnable (he had already beaten Musetti before in Hong Kong), but he never seemed quite right physically in that match and ended his best ever Slam run winning only four games against the Italian. He still got rewarded with a career high ranking of #37.<\/p>\n<p><a  id=\"EsZiuMmRT1hiKRsM-JdC8g\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2233578364\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'EsZiuMmRT1hiKRsM-JdC8g',sig:'RNI4Z_TZDe6Anoo7lxj015M9kOR4IVrBukRazk0dHno=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2233578364',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Another string of heartbreaking losses to end the season<\/h4>\n<p>Munar ended the season like he started: playing arguably the best tennis of his career but failing to convert opportunities. He found himself in another round of 16 at a Masters 1000 in Shanghai and played a very competitive match against Novak Djokovic, but failed to win the big points. With Zizou Bergs (who he had beaten in straight sets at the US Open), Valentin Vacherot, and Arthur Rinderknech the only remaining obstacles if he had got past Djokovic, who knows how far he could have gone if he had pulled through. His next tournament in Basel was more of the same: he beat Ben Shelton once again, ending the year with a 3-0 record (and 6-0 in sets) against the World #9 and found himself in another semifinal, this time against Jo\u00e3o Fonseca. It was an extremely close match, but once again Munar failed to deliver in the biggest points.<\/p>\n<p>Then in the Davis Cup, he got an excellent win over Jiri Lehecka in the quarterfinals, but lost in two tiebreaks to Alexander Zverev in the semifinals, and in the final he won the first set 6-1 against Flavio Cobolli and was up a break in the second set, but lost yet another close match, thus giving Italy the title over Spain.<\/p>\n<p>It was the best season of his career&#8211;but there is a clear feeling that if Munar can overcome his mental demons he still has the potential to go higher. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to do it in 2026.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite being around for around a decade now, Jaume Munar had by far his best season to date in 2025. Prior to this year, he had never won more than 19 matches in a season and never finished with a positive win\/loss record (his best being a 19-24 season in 2022), but this year he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":85776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,9],"tags":[85,13556,18371,10566,16662,5729,811,498,2397,18636,146,10332,3692,22,18095],"class_list":["post-94406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","category-news","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-alexandre-muller","tag-arthur-fils","tag-arthur-rinderknech","tag-ben-shelton","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-casper-ruud","tag-daniil-medvedev","tag-jaume-munar","tag-joao-fonseca","tag-kei-nishikori","tag-lorenzo-musetti","tag-marton-fucsovics","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-valentin-vacherot"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94406"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94481,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94406\/revisions\/94481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}