Player Features

Meet Manuel Guinard: From 'really not good' to the ATP Tour

Manuel Guinard enjoys Australia so much that he departed France on 18 December for the start of his season. which did not begin until the Brisbane International presented by Evie. The country could become even more meaningful for the Frenchman on Wednesday when he tries to reach his second ATP Tour singles quarter-final.

Guinard, a lucky loser, will play top seed Tommy Paul at the Adelaide International.

“I really love these kind of matches, because I want to know where I am compared to these kind of players. I've been watching Tommy Paul on TV. I just want to know how it's going to go, how it's going to be, where I am, if I can compete,” Guinard told ATPTour.com. “[I want to see if] I take a 6-1, 6-1 [loss], we'll see.”

The 29-year-old is the No. 261 player in the PIF ATP Rankings and made his lone tour-level quarter-final in 2022 at Lyon, where he fell to Holger Rune. An alternate in Adelaide qualifying, Guinard lost in the final round to Yannick Hanfmann, but will have an opportunity to make his mark at the ATP 250 event. He is certainly acclimatised to the Australian weather.

“In France, it's minus one [degrees]. In Australia, it's 35 and we've got 10 hours jetlag. So the body when we arrive in Australia, the body is completely [messed up],” said Guinard, who spent time ahead of the season in Brisbane with friend and doubles partner Arthur Rinderknech. They visited Moreton Island and more while training hard, too. “The body needs time. It's not like we arrive and then we visit and it's vacation. We have to do our job and and we need to get the body ready to compete and to be at its maximum.”

Guinard began playing tennis at a young age because his mother is a tennis coach. However, the 6’6” right-hander also played basketball until 13.

“I was not good [at tennis] — really not good when I was young, so until 18, let's say 19, and then I wanted to be a tennis coach, because my my level was not that good. I took the tennis coach exam for one year. And then after that, I earned some money with that, with the tennis lessons,” Guinard said. “Some people helped me financially. So it was good for me, because I could play [as a professional for] one year, two years, three years. And then I started to improve my my level and my ranking, and then I've been 134, in singles, 66 in doubles.”

Fellow Frenchman Victor Wembanyama has taken the basketball world by storm. How close was Guinard to joining his countryman?

“I was kind of good at basketball also. I was tall, I was athletic. I was 12, and I was playing with some guys who were 16. I was taking it seriously,” Guinard said. “But then I was like, ‘Let's take the easy way’, because my mother knew some good [tennis] academies, and she knows some people could help me and stuff. So I decided to go this way.”

Around the age of 14, Guinard spent time at an academy in France and was doing school at home. His ranking was “not good” at the time, but he wanted to give himself the best chance to maximize his potential. His coaches helped him not just with tennis, but improving as a person and with school.

“They really coached me the way I am. I love the game and they took me like this with all the positive things, but also the negative. And they pushed me like this,” Guinard said. “Those people, I admire them a lot because without them, I couldn't be there. And then my parents supported me a lot.”

A lover of many sports, Guinard also enjoys biking and playing padel. But on Wednesday he will take the court to do what he does best against Paul.

“Tennis is a strange sport because everybody's playing good. And you can see some players 300 can beat players Top 100,” Guinard said. “It's pretty cool, actually, because we can compete with some guys like this and then improve our level also.”