Generational Rivalry: Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner evenly split four majors in back-to-back seasons

Diego Schwartzman, a former Top 10 player and fan favorite wherever he goes, is playing the last tournament of his professional career in front of his home crowd in Buenos Aires this week.

He’ll face Nicolas Jarry in the first round on Wednesday.

Here are 10 things to know about the Argentine’s incredible career:

He captured the biggest title of his career at the ATP 500 clay-court event in Rio de Janeiro in 2018. He won a total of four ATP titles, the other three coming at ATP 250s—two on clay at Istanbul in 2016 and Buenos Aires in 2021, and one on hard courts in Los Cabos in 2019.

However, the biggest results of his career—his biggest final and his biggest semifinal—all came in a four-week span in 2020. He reached his first Masters 1000 final in Rome, falling to Novak Djokovic, and his first Grand Slam semifinal at Roland Garros, falling to Rafael Nadal.

He got the two biggest wins of his career by ranking in that four-week stretch, too. Having been 0-22 in his career against Top 5 players going into those four weeks, he stunned a No. 2-ranked Nadal in the quarterfinals of Rome, then a No. 3-ranked Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinals of Roland Garros in a marathon five-setter.

He broke into the Top 10 after reaching the Roland Garros semifinals, rising to a career-high of No. 8. He’s one of just nine Argentine men to reach the Top 8 in ATP rankings history after Guillermo Vilas (career-high No. 2), Jose-Luis Clerc (No. 4), Alberto Mancini (No. 8), Guillermo Coria (No. 3), David Nalbandian (No. 3), Gaston Gaudio (No. 5), Guillermo Canas (No. 8) and Juan Martin del Potro (No. 3).

Schwartzman had an 8-7 career record in five-setters. Among the wins was a grueling five-hour, eight-minute, 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 upset over Thiem in the 2020 Roland Garros quarterfinals.

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He did everything on this list at just 5’ 7”. He was the shortest man to reach the Top 8 since 1981, and the shortest man to reach a Grand Slam semifinal since Roland Garros in 1980—both of those records date back to Harold Solomon, who was one inch shorter at 5’ 6”.

In addition to his Roland Garros semifinal, he made another four Grand Slam quarterfinals. He got to the last eight at the 2017 US Open (falling to Pablo Carreno Busta) and at 2018 Roland Garros, the 2019 US Open and 2021 Roland Garros (falling to Nadal at all three).

He had 13 career wins over Top 10 players. His first one came against Thiem at the Masters 1000 in Canada in 2017 and his last one came against Taylor Fritz at the Masters 1000 in Shanghai in 2023.

He finished in the Top 10 once himself, at No. 9, in 2020. He qualified for the ATP Finals that year but went 0-3 in the round robin, falling to Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev. He had three more Top 20 finishes in 2018 (No. 17), 2019 (No. 14) and 2021 (No.13).

Schwartzman also reached five ATP doubles finals in his career, including two at Masters 1000s—Madrid in 2019 with Thiem and Rome in 2022 with 6' 10" John Isner.

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He may add some wins to this in Buenos Aires this week, but as of now, he amassed a clean 250 tour-level wins in his career. And when it’s sliced up by surface, there’s even more symmetry—he has 120 wins on hard courts, 120 wins on clay and 10 wins on grass.

And finally, a lot of his achievements place him among the most accomplished Argentine men in the Open Era. Not only is he one of just nine Argentine men to reach the Top 8, as mentioned above, but he has the 10th-most career wins for an Argentine man in the Open Era (250), the ninth-most Top 10 wins (13), the fourth-most hard-court wins (120) and the fourth-most career wins at Grand Slams (59).

He has one more tournament to go, too…

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