Nuno Borges in 2025: Solid But No Real Breakthrough

After a breakthrough season in 2024 where he reached the top 30 for the first time in his career, there was some expectation that Nuno Borges might rise further in 2025 but it wasn’t to be. He had a solid season, with a career best 30 ATP wins (24 in 2024) and some very nice wins, but there was always something missing in moments where a bigger breakthrough was there for the taking and his year end ranking of #47 reflects that.

A solid start

Borges had a solid start to the season, even if he missed a huge chance to reach the final in Auckland; he served for it in the third against Zizou Bergs but ended up losing the match and the chance for a second career title. Then at the Australian Open he couldn’t match his round of 16 performance of 2024, but he had a very respectable performance in his first ever Slam as a seed, living up to his seeding and even winning a set against Carlos Alcaraz in the third round.

Post Australian Open struggles

From the Australian Open to Roland Garros, Borges only won multiple matches in one tournament: in Monte Carlo, where he then lost in routine fashion to Stefanos Tsitsipas in the last 16. In the remaining tournaments, he won one match at best, including two more losses to Zizou Bergs in Marseille and Miami and a loss to #201 Valentin Vacherot in Davis Cup (although this one doesn’t look so bad in retrospect). After losing early in Indian Wells to Grigor Dimitrov, he joined the Phoenix Challenger as the two time defending champion; he wasn’t that far from a third consecutive title, but lost in the semifinals to #82 Alexander Bublik, another loss that doesn’t look quite so bad in retrospect.

First top 10 win at Roland Garros and missed chances for a big Slam run

Borges didn’t have any momentum going into Roland Garros, but he found his groove there and got the biggest win of his career in the second round there against the 2022 and 2023 finalist (and 2024 semifinalist) Casper Ruud, who had recently won the Madrid Masters. It was a fantastic win and one that really opened up the draw for him, but he couldn’t keep up his level and lost a very close three setter with two long tiebreaks to Alexei Popyrin, an especially disappointing result given the surface and the opportunities he had to win especially the second set.