Etcheverry new top-ranked Argentine as Cerúndolo bows out of the Madrid Open

Tomás Etcheverry (World No. 29) will be the top-ranked Argentine in the men’s professional tennis circuit’s ATP ranking at the end of the week. The 26-year-old from La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, will leap over his countryman Francisco Cerúndolo after he was ousted from the Madrid Open’s fourth round on Tuesday. Cerúndolo, who was the best-ranked Argentine since May 2025, fell to Belgium’s Alexander Blockx by 7-6 (8), 6-2.  In the ATP ranking system, players earn or lose points depending on whether they improve their performance in the previous year’s tournament (or one played the same week of the calendar) or not.  Cerúndolo had to defend the 400 points he had earned in the 2025 tournament, when he reached the semifinals. After falling to Blockx, the 27-year-old will lose 300 of those points, enough to see him drop to 27th place in the ranking. On the opposite side of the seesaw is Etcheverry, who, despite falling in the same round to Frenchman Arthur Fils (25), matched his best-ever week at an ATP Masters 1000 tournament. The result saw him shoot up the rankings to his best-ever position of 26th, enough to overtake Cerúndolo.  The gap between the two could widen soon, as both are set to compete at the Italian Open, where Etcheverry exited in the first round last year, while Cerúndolo reached the fourth round. A solid tournament for Solana Sierra The Madrid Open was a good outing as well for Solana Sierra, the Argentine number 1 in the women’s tour, who wrapped up her best-ever participation in a WTA 1000-level tournament. The 21-year-old got to Spain as the world No. 88 and will depart having climbed 17 positions to 71st on the WTA Tour. She beat Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska (No. 49) by 7-6, 7-6 in the first round; Poland’s Magdalena Frech (38) by 6-2, 6-4; and Turkey’s Zeynep Sönmez (67) by 0-6, 6-2, 6-3 before falling to the former World No. 1 Czech Karolina Pliskova (194) by 6-4, 6-3. Sierra could climb even higher with a solid performance in the upcoming Italian Open, as she has very few points to defend until after Roland Garros in May.