Over the past few days, Valentin Vacherot has taken on the challenge of proving that his Shanghai Masters title was not a one-off fluke, and he has handled that test impressively. In his second-round match at the Paris Masters, he effectively silenced any remaining doubts by facing the same opponent he defeated in the Shanghai final, Arthur Rinderknech, and producing a nearly identical outcome, battling back from a set down to win 6-7, 6-3, 6-4 in a high-quality contest.
The 26-year-old faced a level of pressure during his title run in Shanghai that no player from his country had ever experienced in a tennis tournament. If anything, he has likely faced even greater pressure in the following weeks in Basel and Paris as he tried to validate those results. To his credit, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, as he has shown over the past few days that he truly belongs at this level. Last week, he pushed Taylor Fritz to three sets in Basel and has now beaten two top-30 players, Jiri Lehecka and Arthur Rinderknech, to reach the round of 16 on his Paris Masters debut.
Before this month, Vacherot had won only one main-draw match at tour level, but he is now on an impressive 11-match winning streak at Masters events, the second joint-longest of the year behind only Carlos Alcaraz. His title run in Shanghai lifted him more than 150 spots in the rankings, and with his continued progress in Paris, he is now just a couple more wins away from breaking into the top 30 for the first time in his career.
Cameron Norrie has been searching for a big result that could spark a resurgence and help him rediscover the form that once made him a top-10 player. He will be hoping that his recent three-set upset win over Carlos Alcaraz can serve as that turning point. However, it is now up to him to build on that momentum, as a defeat in the following round would effectively make that big win meaningless.
This was Norrie’s first win over a top-5 player since Rio de Janeiro in 2023, when he also came from a set down to defeat Carlos Alcaraz and capture the title, which remains his most recent tour-level trophy. The former Indian Wells Masters champion is now aiming to reach his first Masters quarterfinal since Indian Wells 2023, entering this clash with a 4–6 career record in round-of-16 matches at Masters events.
Head-to-head: 0–0. A month ago, Valentin Vacherot would have been a massive underdog in this matchup, but his Shanghai run has completely changed his stature, and deservedly so. He now enters this clash as the favorite. Vacherot has won 11 of his last 12 matches against higher-ranked opponents, and it will be interesting to see if he can continue producing these impressive performances.
