Nicolás Massú

Early years

Massú was born in a family of Palestinian and Hungarian-Jewish descent and introduced to tennis at age five by his grandfather, Ladislao Fried. From age 12, he was trained at the Valle Dorado tennis academy, near Villa Alemana, by Leonardo Zuleta, with whom he perfected his forehand and double-handed backhand. He later trained at the Nick Bollettieri academy, in Florida, United States, alongside Marcelo Ríos, and later at the High Performance Center in Barcelona, Spain.

Juniors

Massú became a professional tennis player in 1997. That year, he won the prestigious juniors year-end Orange Bowl tournament. He also claimed the boys doubles competitions at Wimbledon (with Peru's Luis Horna) and the US Open (with countryman Fernando González), and was junior doubles world champion in 1997 (and No. 5 in singles).

ATP Tour

In August 1998, Massú won his first Futures tournament, in Spain. The following month, he claimed his first Challenger event, in Ecuador. He won his second Challenger tournament in June 1999, in Italy. In September 1999, he successfully defended his title in Ecuador. In November 1999, he won the Santiago Challenger event, and cracked the top 100 in singles for the first time.

In May 2000, Massú reached his first ATP tournament final, at the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships in Orlando, Florida, where he lost to Fernando González. Later in August, he lost again to another Chilean—Marcelo Ríos—in his US Open debut. In January 2001, Massú reached his second ATP event final, in Adelaide, Australia.

Massú's first ATP title came in February 2002 in Buenos Aires, where he defeated Argentine Agustín Calleri in a three-set final, after being down match point. At the 2003 event, Calleri took revenge and defeated him in the first round, a loss that pushed Massú out of the top 100 in singles and forced him to play Challengers once again. In April 2003, he reached the Bermuda Challenger final.

Massú claimed his second ATP title in July 2003 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. The following week, he reached the final of the Kitzbühel, Austria tournament, cracking the top 50 in singles for the first time. In September he made three consecutive tournament finals, including a win at a Challenger event and his third ATP title at Palermo, Italy. In October, he reached the final at the Madrid Tennis Masters Series tournament, losing to Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero in the final. He ended the year at World No. 12.

In mid-2004, Massú parted ways with Argentine coach Gabriel Markus, whom he replaced with Chilean Patricio Rodríguez. In July 2004, Massú won his fourth ATP title in Kitzbühel, and then went on to win two gold medals at the Athens Olympics in August (see below). Thanks to his outstanding performance at the Olympics, he reached his career-high ATP singles ranking of World No. 9. In November, he underwent groin surgery, and therefore entered the 2005 season off top form. He ended an unremarkable 2005 with a six-match losing streak, although ironically 2005 also saw his best performance at a Grand Slam tournament as he reached the fourth round of the US Open, losing to Guillermo Coria.

He was the first player to be beaten by Stan Wawrinka in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament, at the 2005 French Open.

In January 2006, Massú lost his hometown event at Viña del Mar to José Acasuso in the final. In February, he won his sixth ATP event at Costa do Sauipe, Brazil. In April, he reached the final of the Casablanca event in Morocco. In July, he lost to Novak Djokovic in the final of the Amersfoort tournament.

In January 2007, Massú repeated his Viña del Mar showing of 2006, losing to Luis Horna in straight sets. In July, he began an eight-match losing streak, ended in October in Saint Petersburg.

Massú had an early exit at the Viña del Mar tournament in January 2008, losing to Sergio Roitman in the first round. Because he was defending points from a final showing in 2007, the following week he fell to no. 97 in the world. In July, his singles ranking plummeted to no. 138, his worst since November 1999. Later in the year, he won the Florianópolis II Challenger event and was finalist in two other tournaments at that level.

Massú began 2009 by not winning a match during his first five tournaments and losing his opening Davis Cup singles match against Croatia in March. He broke his losing streak at the Indian Wells Masters, beating Argentine Eduardo Schwank in three sets in the first round.

Olympics

Massú has represented Chile in three Summer Olympics: 2000 Sydney, Athens 2004, and 2008 Beijing. At the 2000 event's opening ceremony, he was his country's standard bearer, after Marcelo Ríos failed to show up. In his first-round match, he beat Slava Doseděl, but lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero in the next round.

The story was different in Athens, where Massú captured both singles and doubles titles. On August 21, he and partner Fernando González, defeated Nicolas Kiefer and Rainer Schüttler of Germany to win the doubles competition, making history by giving Chile its first-ever Olympic gold medal. Massú and Gonzalez came from 4 straight match points at the fourth set tie-break to claim the gold. The following day, he captured his second gold medal by defeating American Mardy Fish in five sets in the men's singles final. Following his victory in singles he was declared as Athlete of the Day by the 2004 Athens Olympics' organization.

Because of his low ranking, Massú was granted a wild card to compete in both singles and doubles events in Beijing. He only managed to reach the second round in singles and was ousted on his first match in doubles, where he partnered again with Fernando González. To this day, Massú is the only male player in the open era to have won gold medals in both singles and doubles at the same Olympic games.

Davis Cup

Massú began playing for Chile in Davis Cup matches in 1996. He currently is 29–17, including 17–4 on clay. Actually, Massú is the current captain of the Chile Davis Cup team, with former no. 1 Marcelo Ríos as coach.

Maccabiah Games

Massú is a veteran of the 2001 Maccabiah Games, the international Jewish Olympics.

Playing style

Massú has a style characteristic of a clay-court specialist, with strong baseline play characterized by a solid forehand and backhand.

Massú is known for his fighting spirit, especially when playing for Chile, as he has demonstrated at the 2004 Olympics and at numerous Davis Cup matches. He has also turned around difficult matches.

Personal life

Massú is Jewish, as is his mother, Sonia Fried. His father, Manuel Massú, is of Palestinian ancestry. He has four brothers, Stefano, Jorge, Geza, and Yuri.

Doubles performance timeline

¹Held as Hamburg Masters till 2008. Held as Madrid Masters 2009–2013.
²Held as Stuttgart Masters till 2001, Madrid Masters from 2002–2008, and Shanghai Masters 2009–2013.