Francisco Cerundolo’s Queen’s Club quarterfinal against Arthur Fery was heading in a straightforward enough direction when a single moment stopped everything. Approaching the net during the second set, a powerful Fery backhand pass struck the Argentine. The backhand pass struck Cerundolo’s throat: a dangerous blow. The ball made clean contact, Cerundolo went down, and for a moment, the match felt secondary to everything else. To his credit, Fery didn’t hesitate. 

The British wildcard rushed across to check on his rival, and only a short, tense silence ensued before Cerundolo let him know that he was ready to play. The commentary team watching captured the mood in real time. 

“It’s got him right in the throat. Oh gosh, oh no, this does not look good. Oh, that is a big shock to the system. Well, you just hope that the shock is the main thing here,” one commentator said as the incident unfolded. The relief in the booth when Cerundolo rose to his feet was palpable. “Nice to see, well there you go,” the second commentator said. 

What came next was the moment that gave the crowd its release. On the very next point, Cerundolo himself approached the net, with Arthur Fery at the other end. In an echo of the preceding drama, the Argentine tried to hit a forehand down the line to avoid his opponent, sent the ball sailing long off the baseline, and immediately broke into a laugh. “You’re trying to avoid the guy, you’re missing,” commentary on air.

In what had been a rather alarming situation seconds earlier, it was a moment of instinctive human comedy, and it said a lot about Cerundolo’s calmness that he was able to find the lightness in it so quickly. He closed out the match 7-6(1), 3-6, 6-4, reached the semifinals, and then defeated American Brandon Nakashima 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-4 to reach the biggest final of his career. 

Cerundolo will face eighth seed Tommy Paul in the Queen’s Club final, becoming only the second Argentine man in the Open Era to reach the final at the Championships, joining David Nalbandian, who contested the 2012 final. The run hasn’t been easy. He outlasted Aleksandar Kovačević in three sets in the round of 32, then swept Jenson Brooksby 6-0, 6-4 in the round of 16, before the Arthur Fery quarterfinal that produced the most dramatic moment of his week, and the Nakashima semifinal that required him to save a tie-break and find another gear. 

This is the first ATP 500 final for Cerundolo, who has been steadily preparing on a surface he has been working on for several years. He won his first grass-court title at Eastbourne in 2023, and his Queen’s run confirms that reputation was no fluke. 

Cerundolo’s new coaching setup bears fruit at the perfect moment

The coaching change Cerundolo made after Roland Garros has been one of the least discussed but most significant developments of his 2026 season. Following his third-round exit at the French Open, he brought in Nicolas Massu, the former coach of Dominic Thiem, a Chilean who won two gold medals at the Athens Olympics in 2004, to work alongside Pablo Cuevas. The arrangement has yielded instant results. 

In the first grass-court event after that change, Francisco Cerundolo is in an ATP 500 final for the first time in his career. Massu’s mental toughness philosophy, crucial to Thiem’s comeback from a season-ending wrist injury, seems to have resonated with an Argentine player who has been winning tough, three-set matches this week. 

The final against Tommy Paul on Sunday will be the toughest test so far. The eighth seed and American No. 2, Paul, is in superb form all week on the Queen’s Club fast-paced surface. The head-to-head, however, firmly favours the Argentine. They’ve met three times on grass, and Cerundolo has a 2-1 advantage in that series, while he holds a 5-2 advantage in their 10-game overall head-to-head record. Most importantly, their final grass-court match led to Cerundolo securing the Eastbourne title in 2023, beating Paul in the final to pick up the biggest grass-court win of his career so far. 

He now has the opportunity to complete the same feat on a considerably bigger stage. So the question on Sunday will be whether Massu’s influence can carry him the rest of the way or not, and the evidence from the last five days in West London suggests it will be.