Monaco's Valentin Vacherot is thrilled to have a chance to play against Novak Djokovic after missing out on meeting Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Vacherot, who achieved his career-high ranking of No. 110 last June, is currently ranked at No. 204 in the world. With his ranking, the Monegasque was far from making the Shanghai Masters main draw directly. But after winning two qualifying matches, the 26-year-old made his first Masters main draw outside Monte Carlo.
On Thursday, Vacherot continued his dream Shanghai run by recording the biggest win of his career after upsetting world No. 11 Holger Rune 2-6 7-6 (4) 6-4 to reach the semifinal. As a reward, the world No. 204 will have a chance to play against record 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic for the first time in his career.
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Vacherot: I missed playing against Federer and Nadal... To meet Djokovic means a lot
"I started my career, and this is only my fourth season on the professional tour. I started my first full season when it was in 2022. So I missed Roger. Roger stopped in 2022. I think I played maybe one tournament the same as Rafa. So I had no chance to play Rafa in my career. And if I, who knows whenever Novak is going to retire, we know it's rather sooner than later. So if I can play Saturday Novak it will be, it would just be, it would mean a lot to play at least one of the guys of the big three in my career," the world No. 202 said.
So far in his career, Vacherot has mainly played on the ITF and Challenger circuit. But with his run to the Shanghai semifinal, the Monegasque is set to improve for over 100 spots on the ATP rankings list and broke into the top-100 for the first time in his career.
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It remains to be seen if Vacherot can upset Djokovic and come just one win away from becoming a Masters champion in Shanghai as a qualifier.
