VERO BEACH – On his first match point, unranked Brazilian Joaquim de Almeida ripped a forehand at the toes of top seed Alex Rybakov, who was unable to poke his half-volley attempt over the net to put an exclamation point on arguably the most incredible journey from qualifiers to a professional tennis title in the history of the sport.
What’s more improbable, Almeida, a teaching pro living in Orlando and part-time aspiring tennis professional, was the 28th alternate just to get into the 32-player qualifying draw of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation $15,000 ITF Futures tournament held at a sold-out Sea Oaks Beach & Tennis Club.
Do you want more? Almeida, a top-spinning, 24-year-old lefthander, saved eight match points over three of his first six victories just to reach his first pro final.
No wonder when the Mother’s Day miracle concluded with his 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 victory, Almeida, who sports his spirituality on his sleeve and in his heart, collapsed in a heap on the clay court and from there raised his arms to the heavens before rising and pointing skyward.
Almeida shed some tears when told his name would be inscribed on the Mike Rahaley Memorial Trophy, not to mention winning 15 precious ATP ranking points to jump-start his career.
“This week was crazy, but every single victory is not mine; it’s Gods,’’ said a choked-up Almeida, who played two seasons for Virginia Commonwealth University and then Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university that houses a major theological seminary in Lynchburg, Va.
“A lot of times I thought that it could be [over] in this tournament since the qualifying, but I always had something in my heart saying that I wasn’t done yet, that this tournament I was going to achieve something big, and here I am. … I haven’t believed it yet, to be honest.”
Almeida played a near flawless first set, committing just four unforced errors to go with 13 winners. His level dropped in the second set (2 winners, 14 errors), while Rybakov cleaned up his act. After the opening set, Almeida dropped nine of the next 11 games when he heard a voice from the crowd.
“There was one person that gave me a motivation in that third set that I was kind of remembering. [Vero Beach tennis fan Fran Henig] said, ‘Remember who got you here or how did you get here?’ At that point, I was saying, ‘That’s true. It’s not me. I’m not playing. It’s God that lives inside of me.’”
Almeida entered with a ranking of zero because his No. 1244 rank obtained over his first and only professional season in 2024 came off the board because of his inactivity in all of 2025. Almeida is believed to be the second player with a zero ATP ranking to ever with this 30-year event, with the other being Ryan Sweeting in 2005.
Sweeting eventually reached a respectable career-high of No. 64 in 2011 and did win one ATP 250 tournament that year in Houston.
“This might be the story of the year in professional tennis and probably the greatest story ever in the history of the ITF World Tennis Tour, the minor leagues of pro tennis,’’ tournament director Randy Walker said.
Almeida became one of the eight qualifiers to gain a spot in the 32-player main draw. But he needed more great escapes than Houdini to win this tournament.
In his second qualifying round, he had to stave off two match points before winning 13-11 in the decisive 10-point tiebreaker. Then in his first-round match of the main draw he survived a 3-hour-20-minute battle and again had to save four match points before outlasting seventh-seeded Strong Kirchheimer in a third-set tiebreaker.
Next up was ambidextrous qualifier Matthew Segura, who had been 20-0 in wild-card tournaments at Sea Oaks, but the great-nephew of legendary Ecuadorian Pancho Segura succumbed to the oppressive heat as well as Almeida’s wall-like defensive prowess in three more sets.
Almeida’s quarterfinal featured a David and Goliath matchup in which he was being blown off the court 0-6, 0-2 before wearing down former world No. 39 J.J. Wolf, who’s on the comeback trail from shoulder surgery. Wolf, 27, held two match points but was unable to put Almeida away before retiring with shoulder pain, trailing 0-6, 7-6 (7), 1-0.
“I was actually close in the games,’’ Almeida said of Wolf’s head start. “I had opportunities. I was a little scared playing JJ, someone who I’ve seen on TV many times. I was a little anxious to play him. It was close, and then I missed some shots because of anxiety that I was playing this guy, but then as soon as I got in the match,
“I saw I had an opportunity. I kind of started to believe more and that’s what kind of happened.”
He then dispatched fourth-seeded Quinn Vandecasteele in straight sets in the semis with his customary clay-court style of returning forehand blasts as if he’s sitting in a rocking-chair looping deep topspin forehands to the baseline in extended rallies until his exhausted adversary committed an unforced error.
“Grinding competing, I think this is the type of mindset that I always arrive to play and I try to mix in a lot of stuff,’’ Almeida said. “Sometimes I just make balls; sometimes I go for the ball; sometimes I do drop shots; and sometimes I’m at the net. So, I’m trying to be everywhere where the guy doesn’t know what I’m going to do.”
In the final battle of lefthanders, Rybakov, 29, who owns an aesthetically beautiful one-hand backhand and the better serve, was far more experienced than Almeida. He has won five Futures titles, competed in qualifiers of 10 ATP-level tournaments, as well as playing in two US Open qualifiers in 2019 and ’22.
He was ranked a career-high No.261 last October, and has been a regular in Challenger tournaments, a level above ITF Futures, but a level below ATP events. He regularly practices with Top 20 American pros Tommy Paul and Frances Tiafoe in Boca Raton.
Almeida had played in just eight main-draw pro Futures tournaments all in 2024 and had never gone further than the quarterfinals. He doesn’t have a hitting partner and was only able to afford to play this week because Lynn Southerly, executive chairman of the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, got him housing with a Sea Coast member.
Rybakov, a Long Island native, who has lived in Coral Springs (South Florida) since he was 7, said he struggled with the heat and humidity this week. He had to endure two three-hour matches in the early rounds and admitted he was low on energy at times.
While Rybakov gave Almeida credit for his victory, he agreed with his religious opponent that perhaps divine intervention did play a part in his unlikely title run.
“It’s a matter of a couple points here and there,’’ said Rybakov, whose older sister Katie was an All-American tennis standout at Florida State. “Even down the stretch in the third. He broke me at 3-2 with me serving, and that was a super long game. He hit some amazing shots. He hit a pass from the fence right inside the baseline.
“You got to give credit to him. He played good tennis at big moments and as you said, it kind of felt like everything lined up for him this week. Even the last game at 5-3, he hit one net-cord winner and one full shank. Not to say he’s lucky, but it just felt like everything at the end kind of fell his way and some days that happens.
“An unbelievable story, 28th alternate to not even getting into the qualifying. And then he wins 13-11 in the last round of qualies. This guy has just been hanging on by a thread, and now he’s lifting a trophy. Unbelievable effort.”
Almeida hasn’t lived at home since he was 13 to join a tennis academy in Buenos Aires. He fell into a bad crowd and had to overcome several troubled teenage years involving drugs and alcohol. At one point he considered suicide, before turning his life around through his religious beliefs and his love of tennis.
“I tried to give my life away and literally God saved my life,’’ Almeida said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wasn’t going to be alive right now, so everything that I do is to glorify him.
“It was in a big city and that’s when I kind of got lost, but thanks for my family that since I was young, they gave me the foundation. God found me when I was in the deepest time of my life, and that’s when my life started to go back to normal.’’
On a hot Sunday afternoon, Almeida also launched his tennis career, and couldn’t wait to call his mother, Naira, with the amazing news and to wish her a wonderful Mother’s Day.
Okonkwo and Heck win doubles title
The top-seeded dynamic duo of Minnesotan Hunter Heck and Oliver Okonkwo continued their dominant form this week with their fourth consecutive straight-set victory, this time a 6-2, 6-2 victory over the much taller tandem of Preston Brown of Boca Raton and Chile’s Diego Jarry Fillol Saturday afternoon to win the doubles title.
It marked the second consecutive doubles title for Okonkwo and Heck, who just dropped one set in their Orange Park doubles championship run last week. The 6-foot-2 Okonkwo, 26, who owns a massive serve, also has won doubles titles this year in Sherbrooke, Canada and Las Vegas with different partners.
“Obviously, we can play doubles, but we love singles as well,’’ said Okonkwo, now living in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago.
This was Heck’s second career pro title after seven previous finals appearances.
“It makes my job a lot easier when he’s serving the way he has been,’’ said the 5-7 Heck, 23, who briefly played doubles with Okonkwo when the two attended the University of Illinois. Okonkwo graduated from University of Iowa but got his Masters’ degree in Kinesiology at UI.
It was no easy task to lob over or blast through 6-foot-6 Preston Brown of Boca Raton and 6-5 Diego Jarry Fillol of Chile.
Fillol, 23, reached his first pro final after spending two years playing college tennis at Saint Mary’s College in the Bay area and two years at the University of North Carolina.
He is hoping to follow in the clay-court footsteps of his ATP-playing brother Nicolas Jarry and grandfather Jaime Fillol, both who reached the Top 20 at one point of their sterling professional tennis careers. Diego
“It’s amazing,’’ said Fillol, whose parents Allan and Cecilia were professional volleyball players and Aunt Catalina Fillol serves as tournament director in the ATP 250 Santiago event in their hometown.
“They chopped down the trees and made a path, and we just got to follow it. I would say it’s a balance, and also you got to learn what perspective and what mindset to take it. They dealt me the cards, and some people rather see the pressure that gives you, and I just like to see all the lessons, all the tips that they can give you. I think it’s a little bit more healthy to look at the other side.”
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Unranked tennis pro Joaquim de Almeida wins Mardy Fish title
Reporting by Harvey Fialkov, Special to TCPalm / Treasure Coast Newspapers
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
