Van Assche claims maiden ATP title in Estoril, battling past Blockx in three sets
Luca Van Assche won his first ATP Tour title in Estoril, edging Alexander Blockx 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 to crack the top 50 two years after a career dip took him outside the top 200.
Luca Van Assche, Estoril 2026 | © Ricardo Rocha/ZUMA Press Wire
Luca Van Assche won the first ATP Tour title of his career on Sunday, beating No. 4 seed Alexander Blockx of Belgium 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 in the final of the Millennium Estoril Open.
It was the first ATP Tour final of the season contested between two players born in 2004 or later, and only the second this year in which both finalists were chasing a maiden title, after Rafael Jodar’s win over Marco Trungelliti in Marrakech.
The Frenchman, ranked No. 78, took the opening set 6-4 after the pair traded early breaks, then had to regroup after Blockx levelled by taking the second 6-4. The decider swung back and forth: Van Assche surged to a 3-0 lead, Blockx clawed back to force a deciding stretch at 5-5 after saving break points, but Van Assche broke straight back and served out the match on his first championship point for a 7-5 finish.
Van Assche, now world No. 48
Van Assche reached the final without dropping more than one set, beating Hugo Gaston, top seed Andrey Rublev, No. 8 seed Pablo Carreno Busta and Portugal’s Frederico Ferreira Silva across the week.
Blockx, seeking to become the first Belgian champion in the tournament’s history, had needed to save two match points against Kyrian Jacquet in the second round and to recover from 5-7, 2-5 down against Luciano Darderi in the semi-finals to reach the title match.
The win takes Van Assche into the top 50 for the first time in his career, rising to a projected world No. 48 on Monday. A former world No. 1 junior, he reached a career-high No. 63 back in October 2023 before a lean two-year stretch that dropped him as low as No. 238 last year.
He becomes the second Frenchman to win the Estoril title after Richard Gasquet in 2015, and the third French ATP Tour champion this season, following Arthur Fils in Barcelona and Quentin Halys in Kitzbuhel. He is also the fourth player from the 2004 generation to win an ATP Tour title, alongside Fils, Ignacio Buse and Daniel Merida.
For Blockx, 21, the runner-up finish still carries reward: he moves to a new career-high ranking of No. 32, having already broken into the top 40 this season on the back of a run to the semi-finals at the Madrid Masters, where he beat Casper Ruud and Felix Auger-Aliassime.
