Who is Terence Atmane, the French tennis player with the unusual career who is challenging Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals in Cincinnati?

What triggers a career? Sometimes it only takes a little, a small mental, sometimes physical, adjustment, for months of work to finally pay off. Térence Atmane's came in August 2025: confined to the margins of professional tennis since the start of his career, to second-tier tournaments where players fight to scrape together a few meager ATP points, the 23-year-old Frenchman shattered his glass ceiling this week in the United States. After qualifying for the Masters 1000 (the biggest tournaments after the four Grand Slams) in Cincinnati, he managed the feat of reaching the semi-finals and will face world number 1 Jannik Sinner this Saturday evening, August 16, for a spot in the final.

Ranked 136th in the ATP rankings before the tournament (a position he has been hovering around for the past two years), the man who had a disastrous start to the season, winning only one match on the main circuit in seven months, has just won five in a row. And not against just anyone. Italy's Fabio Cobolli, ranked 22nd