Benoit Paire · Biography

Benoît Paire won his first ATP title in doubles: on 6 January 2013 he took the Chennai tournament with Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka, beating Germans Andre Begemann and Martin Emmrich 6-2, 6-1 in the final. Born on 8 May 1989 in Avignon, France, Paire is a 1.96-metre right-hander with a two-handed backhand who turned professional in 2007. In singles he won three ATP titles, Båstad in 2015 and Marrakech and Lyon in 2019, and reached a career-high world ranking of No. 18 on 11 January 2016.

Early years in Provence

He started playing tennis at the age of five, following his older brother Thomas, a finalist at the French junior championships in 2003. He spent a year at the ISP Academy in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice. His best junior year was 2007: in April he won events in Cap d’Ail and Istres, in June he climbed to No. 91 in the world junior rankings, and he reached the final of the French under-18 championship, where he lost to Guillaume Rufin. In November 2007 he joined the French Federation’s National Training Centre, which he left in 2008 over behavioural problems. From there he worked his way up through the Challenger circuit, winning in Brașov and Salzburg in 2011.

First finals on the ATP Tour

In 2012 he played his first ATP singles final, in Belgrade, losing 6-3, 6-2 to Italy’s Andreas Seppi. In 2013 he lost the Montpellier final to compatriot Richard Gasquet, reached the doubles quarter-finals of the Australian Open with Wawrinka and recorded his first win over a top-10 player, Juan Martín del Potro, at the Rome Masters. A knee injury kept him out for much of 2014, and he finished that year ranked No. 118.

2015: the Båstad breakthrough

The recovery came in 2015. In July he won the Swedish Open in Båstad as an unseeded player after knocking out the top three seeds, beating Tommy Robredo 7-6, 6-3 in the final for his first ATP singles title. At that year’s US Open he beat fourth seed Kei Nishikori of Japan in the first round and went on to reach the last 16. In the autumn he played the Tokyo final, losing 6-2, 6-4 to Wawrinka. He ended the year at No. 19 and was named ATP Comeback Player of the Year. On 11 January 2016 he rose to No. 18, the highest ranking of his career.

Rio 2016 and the Davis Cup

In August 2016 he joined the French Olympic team for the Rio Games as a replacement for Gasquet, who had a back injury. He beat Lukáš Rosol in the first round and lost to Fabio Fognini 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 in the second after holding two match points. Straight after the match, the French Tennis Federation removed him from the squad for breaking the rules and poor behaviour and ordered him to leave the Olympic Village; Paire apologised the following day. His Davis Cup debut came in September 2018, in the semi-final against Spain in Villeneuve-d’Ascq under captain Yannick Noah: he won the opening rubber against Pablo Carreño Busta 7-5, 6-1, 6-0.

Marrakech, Lyon and the Grand Slams

In 2017 he lost the Metz final to Peter Gojowczyk and reached the fourth round at Wimbledon for the first time. In March 2018 he beat Novak Djokovic in the second round of the Miami Masters, and that same year he joined Patrick Mouratoglou’s academy. His best year came in 2019: on 14 April he beat defending champion Pablo Andújar 6-2, 6-3 in the Marrakech final, and on 25 May he won Lyon by defeating Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 6-3. Days later he reached the fourth round of Roland Garros, and in July he matched that run at Wimbledon. At the Australian Open his best result was the third round, in 2014, 2017 and 2022. In January 2020 he played the Auckland final, losing to Ugo Humbert. In all he contested nine ATP singles finals and won three.

Doubles and Challenger titles

In doubles, besides the Chennai title, he lost three ATP finals, among them Chennai in 2016 with Austin Krajicek and Córdoba in 2021 alongside Monaco’s Romain Arneodo. In November 2021 he reached No. 65 in the doubles rankings, in a year when he made the third round of the men’s doubles at Roland Garros and the US Open. In 2023 he won the Puerto Vallarta Challenger, received a wildcard for Roland Garros, where he lost in the first round to Cameron Norrie, and in July triumphed in San Benedetto for the 14th Challenger title of his career.