Matteo Arnaldi Profile: The Italian Who Went From No. 104 to a French Open Semifinal
- 🔑 As of Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, Matteo Arnaldi is ranked No. 37 on the ATP singles list of Sept. 28, with 1,336 points. His career high is No. 30, reached on Aug. 12, 2024. The ATP’s next list, due Monday, Oct. 5, supersedes these figures.
- Arnaldi, born Feb. 22, 2001, in Sanremo, has no ATP Tour singles title but five Challenger titles, the latest in Cagliari in 2026, where he entered as an alternate. He was also on Italy’s 2023 Davis Cup-winning team and won the opening singles match of that final against Alexei Popyrin.
- He was ranked No. 104 when Roland-Garros began. He beat Tallon Griekspoor, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Raphael Collignon and Frances Tiafoe, then advanced when Matteo Berrettini retired injured in the quarterfinal. On Friday, June 5, he withdrew before his first Grand Slam semifinal, against Flavio Cobolli, because of a viral illness.
- Our count since Paris is five wins in 13 matches, including Eastbourne qualifying. He lost in the first round at Wimbledon and the US Open, reached the Umag quarterfinals, and retired in Washington. In Tokyo he beat a wildcard, then lost 7-6, 6-1 to Alcaraz in the round of 16 on Oct. 3.
- ATP Tour reported on Oct. 2 that Arnaldi married Mia Savio in Sanremo in September. He is on the published entry list for the Rolex Shanghai Masters, whose main draw is scheduled for Oct. 7-18; the draw was not out on Oct. 3, and entry lists change. No odds or win probabilities are used.
Matteo Arnaldi is a 25-year-old Italian tennis player ranked No. 37 in the world as of Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, who reached a French Open semifinal from a ranking of No. 104 and then withdrew from it with a viral illness. His latest result was a loss to defending champion Carlos Alcaraz at the Japan Open in Tokyo, and he is on the entry list for the Shanghai Masters. This profile covers his ranking, results and schedule, limited to what has been confirmed.
Where is Matteo Arnaldi ranked, and what is his career high?
Arnaldi is No. 37 on the ATP singles list of Sept. 28, 2026, with 1,336 points, and his career high is No. 30, reached on Aug. 12, 2024. The ATP publishes its next list on Monday, Oct. 5, which supersedes these figures, so treat the ranking as dated. He hit No. 30 after his first Masters 1000 semifinal, in Montreal in 2024. In 2026 he began the year ranked No. 61 and was No. 104 when the French Open started.
Who is Matteo Arnaldi?
Arnaldi is a right-handed Italian singles player, born Feb. 22, 2001, in Sanremo, who turned professional in 2019 and has won five Challenger titles but no ATP Tour singles title. The official Roland-Garros player page lists him at 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m) and 170 pounds (77 kg). His Challenger wins came at Francavilla al Mare in 2022, Tenerife, Murcia and Heilbronn in 2023, and Cagliari in 2026.
His breakthrough came in 2023, when he beat then-No. 4 Casper Ruud in Madrid for his first top-10 win, reached the US Open fourth round, and played on Italy’s Davis Cup-winning team, winning the opening singles match of the final against Alexei Popyrin. In 2025 he beat Novak Djokovic in Madrid and reached the quarterfinals there. His best tour-level results have been semifinals, at Umag in 2023, Montreal in 2024, Delray Beach in 2025 and Roland-Garros in 2026.
How did Arnaldi go from No. 104 to a French Open semifinal?
He turned a lost spring into a Grand Slam semifinal by winning a Challenger title in late April and early May, then winning his way through Roland-Garros while ranked No. 104. The ATP Tour reported that he had lost eight of nine matches earlier in the year. Entering the Sardegna Open Challenger 175 in Cagliari as an alternate, he beat Hubert Hurkacz 6-4, 6-4 in the final for his fifth Challenger title. A wildcard into Rome followed, where he beat Jaume Munar and Alex de Minaur before losing in the third round.
| Round | Opponent | Score |
|---|---|---|
| R1 | Griekspoor (29) | 6-7 6-3 7-6 6-3 |
| R2 | Tsitsipas | 7-6 5-7 6-3 6-2 |
| R3 | Collignon | 6-4 6-7 5-7 6-4 7-6 |
| R4 | Tiafoe (19) | 7-6 6-7 3-6 7-6 6-4 |
| QF | Berrettini | 7-5 5-2 ret. |
| SF | Cobolli (10) | Withdrew |
Arnaldi’s games are listed first; tiebreak scores are omitted and seeds are in parentheses.
The ATP Tour counted 17 hours 42 minutes on court over his first four matches, the longest run to a Grand Slam quarterfinal since match times were first recorded in 1991; the Tiafoe match alone lasted 5 hours 26 minutes. Berrettini retired injured in the quarterfinal. On Friday, June 5, 2026, Arnaldi withdrew before the semifinal against Flavio Cobolli because of a viral illness, according to Roland-Garros and the ATP Tour, and said he had been sick overnight. Cobolli advanced to the final. It was Arnaldi’s first Grand Slam semifinal.
What has Arnaldi done since the French Open?
Since Paris, Arnaldi has won five of 13 matches by our count, two of them in Eastbourne qualifying, and has not gone past a quarterfinal. After qualifying he lost his first-round match at Eastbourne to Giles Hussey, and as the 32nd seed at Wimbledon he lost his opener to Quentin Halys in four sets. Seeded fourth at Umag, he reached the quarterfinals and lost to Damir Dzumhur in three sets. In Washington he retired from his first-round match against Lorenzo Musetti while trailing 6-0, 3-1; Italian outlets reported a foot problem, and we saw no official medical statement. At the Canada Masters he beat Fabian Marozsan and then lost to Tallon Griekspoor, he lost his opening match at Cincinnati to Martin Landaluce, and as the 30th seed at the US Open he lost in the first round to James Duckworth in four sets.
What happened when Arnaldi played Alcaraz in Tokyo?
Alcaraz beat Arnaldi 7-6, 6-1 in the second round (round of 16) of the Japan Open in Tokyo on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, and now leads their head-to-head 3-0. Arnaldi reached that round by beating Japanese wildcard Rei Sakamoto 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the first round; Sakamoto was also his first-round opponent at the Shanghai Masters in 2025. Alcaraz, the top seed and defending champion, saved four set points in the first-set tiebreak, according to the ATP Tour, then won the second set 6-1. Their earlier meetings were at the 2023 US Open and the 2024 Indian Wells Masters. Alcaraz advanced to the quarterfinals, and our Alcaraz results page tracks what comes next.
Is Arnaldi playing the Shanghai Masters?
Arnaldi is on the published entry list for the Rolex Shanghai Masters, an ATP Masters 1000 on outdoor hard courts with its main draw scheduled for Oct. 7-18, 2026, but the draw had not been released when we checked on Oct. 3. Entry lists change before a draw is made, so being listed is not the same as playing, and we make no prediction about the draw or any result. He has reached the third round in Shanghai twice, in 2023 and 2024, and the second round in 2025. This is the part of the page most likely to change once the draw is published.
Did Matteo Arnaldi get married?
Yes: the ATP Tour reported on Oct. 2, 2026, that Arnaldi married Mia Savio in September in Sanremo, where he was born. We are limiting this to what the ATP Tour reported.
What is the short version of Arnaldi’s 2026 season?
Through Oct. 3, 2026, his season is a slide past No. 100, a Challenger title that turned it around, a Grand Slam semifinal he could not play, and a summer of mostly early exits. This page sticks to what has been played and does not project where his ranking goes next. For the event he just left, see our Japan Open draw and schedule guide .
How we verified this
Ranking and career high. The ATP’s official singles rankings page (list of Sept. 28, 2026) shows Arnaldi at No. 37 with 1,336 points, and the official Roland-Garros player page and an independent results database agree on No. 37. The career high of No. 30 on Aug. 12, 2024 comes from the ATP’s own rankings story of Aug. 13, 2024, the Roland-Garros page and an encyclopedia entry. One automated summary of the results database printed 34 as a career high; that matches his best 2026 ranking, not his career best, so we followed the ATP. The ATP’s next list (Monday, Oct. 5) was not out at write time, so the page says “as of Sept. 28”.
The No. 104 figure is not his low. The ATP’s May 31 feature and the results database both put him at No. 104 when Roland-Garros began, and that is all the page claims. The database shows him ranked about 107 at the start of April, so we never call 104 his lowest ranking. The “lost eight of nine matches” line is the ATP’s wording, and the database match log (Australian Open through Madrid qualifying) gives the same count.
Match results and scores. Tokyo (Sakamoto, then Alcaraz), every Roland-Garros round, Rome, Cagliari and the summer results were read from the results database’s match log and cross-checked against an encyclopedia entry and ATP Tour or tournament coverage. The Tokyo first-round day is left out because aggregators list the tournament start date, not the match date. The first-set tiebreak score against Alcaraz is omitted because sources conflict. A few outlets call the Alcaraz match “third round”; the Tokyo draw has 32 players, so it was his second match, the round of 16. Tiebreak scores in the Roland-Garros table are omitted for width.
Alcaraz head-to-head. The database match log shows three meetings, all Alcaraz wins (2023 US Open, 2024 Indian Wells, 2026 Tokyo), and a tennis news report agrees. One video listing labeled the Tokyo match “2025”, which is a mislabel.
Roland-Garros court time. The 17 hours 42 minutes and the “longest run to a major quarterfinal since match times were first recorded in 1991” wording are the ATP Tour’s and are attributed to it. The four match lengths in the results database add up to the same total, and the Tiafoe match (5 hours 26 minutes) matches the ATP headline.
Cagliari title. The final (6-4, 6-4 over Hurkacz), the Challenger 175 category and the fifth-Challenger count come from several Italian outlets, an encyclopedia and the results database. The tournament ran Apr. 28 to May 3, so the page says only “late April and early May”.
Health items. The French Open withdrawal on Friday, June 5 and the “viral illness” reason come from the tournament’s own announcement and ATP Tour reporting, which also carries his own account; the page repeats only that. The Washington retirement (6-0, 3-1 after about 40 minutes) is attributed by Italian press to a foot problem; another recap used more general wording and sources disagree on which foot, so the page names no side, cause or timeline, and we saw no official medical statement. Nothing is said about recovery.
Wedding. Only the ATP Tour’s story of Oct. 2, 2026 (“Arnaldi marries Mia Savio in Sanremo”) is used: married in September, in Sanremo. A specific date, venue, guests and family are omitted on purpose.
Shanghai. The ATP’s tournament page and an encyclopedia list the main draw as Oct. 7-18; the official tournament site’s banner shows Oct. 5, which is the start of qualifying. An Italian outlet’s entry list of Sept. 11 and a second Italian site’s list on Oct. 3 both include Arnaldi, and the encyclopedia’s withdrawal list as of Oct. 3 does not name him. The draw was not published when we checked and entry lists change (several players have already withdrawn), so the page says “on the entry list” and never that he will play. His past Shanghai results (third round in 2023 and 2024, second round in 2025) come from the results database, and an ATP headline confirms the 2024 match against Medvedev.
Deliberately left out. Coaches (the encyclopedia and the official page disagree), doubles ranking (sources differ), playing style, prize money (may be stale) and any Davis Cup selection (none confirmed).
Still moving at write time. The ranking line and the Shanghai entry and draw; both change between Oct. 5 and Oct. 7.
No betting odds, spreads, or win-probability models appear anywhere on this page. Search results around the Alcaraz match were crowded with betting and prediction-market pages; none were used.