Stefanos Tsitsipas Bio
Stefanos Tsitsipas (Greek: Στέφανος Τσιτσιπάς; born 12 August 1998) is a Greek professional tennis player widely regarded as one of the most talented competitors of his generation. He has been ranked as high as world No. 3 in men’s singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), a position he first reached in August 2021, making him the highest-ranked Greek men’s tennis player in history. Tsitsipas has won twelve ATP Tour singles titles, including the 2019 ATP Finals and three Masters 1000 crowns, and has contested two major finals at the 2021 French Open and the 2023 Australian Open. Standing 6 feet 4 inches tall and based in Monte Carlo, Monaco, he combines a powerful serve with an aggressive all-court game anchored by a classic one-handed backhand.
Early Life and Background
Stefanos Tsitsipas was born on 12 August 1998 in Athens, Greece, to Apostolos Tsitsipas, a Greek tennis coach originally from Proastio, and Julia Apostoli, a Russian former professional player of partial Greek heritage. His maternal grandfather, Sergei Salnikov, was an Olympic gold medal-winning member of the Soviet national football team and a former manager of FC Spartak Moscow. Both parents were experienced tennis players who met at a WTA tournament in Athens, where Julia was competing and Apostolos was working as a line judge, and they were employed as tennis instructors at the Astir Palace resort in Vouliagmeni at the time of Stefanos’s birth. He has three younger siblings, brothers Petros and Pavlos and sister Elisavet, all of whom also play tennis.
Introduced to the sport at age three by his father, Tsitsipas began formal lessons at Tennis Club Glyfada near Athens at six and has continued to train there throughout his career. He also played football and swimming as a child, and at age nine announced to his father that he wanted to pursue tennis competitively. In 2015, he began splitting time between Greece and the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France. His father has served as his primary coach, having formally studied tennis coaching at the University of Athens to better train his children.
Path to Professional Tennis
Tsitsipas started competing on the ITF Futures circuit in 2013 shortly after his fifteenth birthday and won his first Futures title in 2015. By the end of 2016, he had captured eleven Futures titles, five in singles and six in doubles, and cracked the top 200 in October of that year. On the junior circuit, he became the world No. 1 ranked player in 2016, a year highlighted by reaching at least the quarterfinals of all eight tournaments he entered, including all four junior Grand Slams, and winning the Wimbledon boys’ doubles title with Estonian partner Kenneth Raisma, becoming the first male Greek player to win a junior Grand Slam title in the Open Era.
His first ATP Tour main-draw appearance came at the 2017 Rotterdam Open, and later that season he earned his first top-10 victory over David Goffin at the European Open in Belgium, a run that pushed him into the top 100. The performance established him as a rising Next Gen star and earned him alternate status for the Next Gen ATP Finals. He turned professional in 2016, building steadily on his junior pedigree.
Stefanos Tsitsipas Career
Early Career (2017–2018)
Tsitsipas opened his ATP account at the 2017 European Open, where, as a qualifier, he upset world No. 10 David Goffin on his way to his first tour-level semifinal. That breakthrough made him the first Greek player ranked inside the top 100, surpassing Konstantinos Economidis. The following year, he reached his first ATP final without dropping a set at the Barcelona Open, where he defeated Dominic Thiem, Novak Djokovic, and Alexander Zverev before losing to Rafael Nadal, becoming the second Greek to reach an ATP final after Nicky Kalogeropoulos in 1973. His run in Barcelona also raised the profile of tennis in Greece, where the sport had long struggled for mainstream attention.
He then reached his first Masters 1000 final at the Canadian Open in Toronto, becoming the youngest player to defeat four top-10 opponents in a single tournament, before falling again to Nadal on his twentieth birthday. Closing the season, Tsitsipas won his maiden ATP title at the Stockholm Open, defeating Fabio Fognini and Ernests Gulbis to become the first Greek ATP champion. He capped 2018 by winning the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, sweeping the field and earning the ATP Most Improved Player award for the year.
ATP Finals Champion and Top-10 Arrival (2019)
Tsitsipas announced himself on the biggest stages in 2019, beginning with his run to the Australian Open semifinals, where he stunned defending champion Roger Federer in the fourth round before losing to Rafael Nadal. He broke into the ATP top 10 for the first time in February after finishing runner-up to Federer at the Dubai Tennis Championships, and soon added titles at the Open 13 in Marseille and the Estoril Open. He also reached his third Masters 1000 final at the Madrid Open, where he defeated Nadal and Zverev in succession before falling to Novak Djokovic. By August, he had climbed to a career-best world No. 5.
After early exits at Wimbledon and the US Open, Tsitsipas surged in the season’s final months. He reached the final of the China Open and the semifinals of the Shanghai Masters and Swiss Indoors, qualifying for the ATP Finals in London. Drawn in a round-robin group with Nadal, Zverev, and Daniil Medvedev, he won two of three matches to advance, then defeated Federer in the semifinals. In the championship match, he outlasted Dominic Thiem in a third-set tiebreak to become the youngest ATP Finals champion since Lleyton Hewitt in 2001, finishing the year ranked No. 6 in the world and earning Greek Male Athlete of the Year honors.
Major Finals and Masters Dominance (2021–2023)
Tsitsipas captured his first Masters 1000 title at the 2021 Monte-Carlo Masters, defeating Andrey Rublev in the final to become the first Greek player to win a Masters event. He added the Lyon Open later that spring and then reached his first Grand Slam final at the French Open, where he stunned Medvedev in the semifinals and led Novak Djokovic by two sets before falling in five. By August 2021, he had risen to world No. 3, a peak that stood as the highest ranking ever achieved by a Greek male player.
He successfully defended his Monte-Carlo title in 2022, lifting the trophy without dropping a set against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, and won his first grass-court title at the Mallorca Open. After a strong clay swing that included the Italian Open final, he added three more Masters finals that season, including a runner-up finish to Djokovic at the Paris Masters. In 2023, Tsitsipas reached his second major final at the Australian Open, where Djokovic again proved too strong, and later that year he reached the 300-win milestone at the Paris Masters, becoming the first man born in 1998 to reach that number. He also lifted his tenth tour title at the Los Cabos Open.
Return of the Father-Coach Era (2024–2025)
After a 2024 season in which he captured his third Monte-Carlo Masters title, Tsitsipas opened 2025 at the United Cup and the Australian Open, where an early exit against Alex Michelsen dropped him to No. 12 in the world. In Dubai, he recorded his 350th career ATP win and went on to capture his twelfth tour title, his first on hard court since 2019, by defeating Felix Auger-Aliassime in the final, snapping an eleven-match losing streak in ATP 500 finals and returning to the top 10. In May 2025, Goran Ivanisevic joined his coaching team, but the partnership ended after less than two months following a first-round retirement at Wimbledon, where Ivanisevic publicly criticized his preparation. Shortly after a second-round loss at the Canadian Open, Tsitsipas announced that his father Apostolos would return as head coach.
Driving Style and Strengths
Stefanos Tsitsipas is regarded as an aggressive baseliner with an all-court game, anchored by a powerful Eastern-grip forehand and a high topspin rate that pushes opponents off the baseline. His favorite shot is his one-handed backhand down the line, a rarity in modern tennis, chosen in part because his parents and his idol Roger Federer all used the same grip. He is most comfortable on clay, the surface he grew up playing in Greece, and has won all three of his Masters titles at the Monte-Carlo Masters, though he has also reached finals on hard courts in Canada and Cincinnati and semifinals three times at the Australian Open. Former British No. 1 Greg Rusedski has compared his calm, composed demeanor to a blend of Bjorn Borg, Andy Murray, and Federer.
Notable Events and Milestones
Tsitsipas has produced several career-defining moments, including saving twelve break points to upset Federer at the 2019 Australian Open and winning a third-set tiebreak to claim the 2019 ATP Finals title over Dominic Thiem. He saved multiple match points en route to the 2018 Canadian Open final, the youngest player to defeat four top-10 opponents in a single event, and recovered from two sets down to beat Nadal at the 2021 Australian Open. He also reached his 300th and 350th career wins in 2023 and 2025, respectively, milestones reached by very few active players of his age.
Stefanos Tsitsipas Career Wins
Stefanos Tsitsipas has built a deep trophy collection across surfaces, highlighted by the 2019 ATP Finals, three Masters 1000 titles at Monte-Carlo, and eleven additional ATP Tour crowns. His biggest titles have come on clay, where he owns a 3-0 record in Masters finals, and on hard courts, where he has lifted trophies in Stockholm, Marseille, Dubai, and Los Cabos. He has also added a grass-court title at the Mallorca Open and an exhibition win at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship.
ATP Tour Highlights
Tsitsipas has won twelve ATP Tour singles titles, beginning with the 2018 Stockholm Open, where he became the first Greek ATP champion, and most recently with the 2025 Dubai Tennis Championships, his first hard-court title since 2019. His first Masters crown came at the 2021 Monte-Carlo Masters, a tournament he has since won three times. He reached his first major final at the 2021 French Open and his second at the 2023 Australian Open, both against Novak Djokovic. He has also been a fixture at the ATP Finals, qualifying in five consecutive seasons and winning the title in 2019.
Other Wins and Performances
On the junior circuit, Tsitsipas became the world No. 1 in 2016 and won the Wimbledon boys’ doubles with Kenneth Raisma, becoming the first male Greek to win a junior Grand Slam title in the Open Era. He also captured the Trofeo Bonfiglio and European Junior Championships that year, and reached the semifinals of Wimbledon and the US Open junior events. He recorded his first ATP top-10 victory over David Goffin in 2017 and has since added wins over Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Zverev across various surfaces.
Stefanos Tsitsipas Family
Family Background and Tennis Lineage
Tennis runs deep in Stefanos Tsitsipas’s family. His mother, Julia Apostoli, was a world No. 1 junior and a professional on the WTA Tour with a career-high ranking inside the top 200, and she represented the Soviet Union in the Federation Cup. His father, Apostolos Tsitsipas, is a trained tennis coach who met Julia while working as a line judge at a WTA event in Athens and has served as Stefanos’s primary coach throughout his career. Stefanos’s maternal aunt, Julia’s twin sister, was also a professional player in the Soviet Union, and the family has credited her financial support with enabling his early junior travel. His siblings, Petros, Pavlos, and Elisavet, all play tennis competitively.
Personal Life
Tsitsipas studied at an English-language school in his youth and speaks English, Greek, and Russian. He is a Greek Orthodox Christian and a supporter of Greek football club AEK Athens. Outside of tennis, he enjoys vlogging and runs his own YouTube channel where he shares travel content. He was in a relationship with fellow tennis player Paula Badosa from May 2023; the couple announced an amicable split in May 2024 before reconciling three weeks later, and in July 2025 it was reported that they had separated again.
2025 Season Performance
Stefanos Tsitsipas began 2025 at the United Cup with Team Greece, defeating Pablo Carreño Busta before falling to Alexander Shevchenko, then suffered his earliest Australian Open exit since 2018 in the first round against Alex Michelsen, a result that dropped him to No. 12 in the world. He rebounded strongly in Dubai, where his second-round win over Karen Khachanov marked his 350th career victory, making him the 13th active player to reach that mark. He went on to defeat Tallon Griekspoor in the semifinals and Felix Auger-Aliassime in straight sets in the final, ending an eleven-match losing streak in ATP 500 finals to capture his twelfth tour title and return to the top 10 at No. 9 in the world.
His form declined sharply in the following months, beginning with a first-round loss to Hamad Medjedovic in Doha. After parting ways with coach Goran Ivanisevic, who had joined in May and publicly questioned his fitness and preparation, Tsitsipas retired during his first-round match at Wimbledon against Valentin Royer and exited in the second round of the Canadian Open against Christopher O’Connell. Shortly thereafter, he announced on social media that his father Apostolos had returned to his team, writing that “sometimes, coming home is the boldest step forward.” The 2025 season remains focused on regaining top-10 form, with renewed family-led coaching and an emphasis on physical conditioning.