Thomaz Bellucci was born in the city of Tiete on 27/12/1987. In 2009 despite of his slip in the rankings he won his first ATP title at Gstaad. It was the first time in five years that a Brazilian won an ATP title, thus he is being considered to be one of the Brazilian biggest hopes for the next years.

Being born in a small city near the big river "Tiete", Bellucci has a calm personality. He is considered to be a very friendly and a discreet player on court, which sometimes could be mistaken by lack of effort. His style of game is similar to a recent Brazilian player, Flavio Saretta: he uses a western
extreme grip which makes his forehand his biggest weapon creating lots of spin in the ball,
mixed up with a good big serve for a clay court player (because of his height), meaning that Bellucci can create lots of problems in clay courts having a heavier top spin ball than clay courters' standard.
The main problems in his game are still his lack of net ability (volleys) and an irregular backhand,
which sometimes can´t create enough spin.

Bellucci was one of the first Brazilian new players that were under the age of ten when Guga won Roland Garros. It means he is probably one of the first players of the new generation that saw the first Grand Slam being conquered by Brazilian Legend Kuerten, and this fact might surely have inspired him as a junior to believe he could be a good pro player. As a junior he didn´t try to play many matches at ITF tournaments and his best result was a runner-up at Venezuela G1
International tournament as a 16 year old. But we can say Bellucci still showed a lot of potential playing local Brazilian junior tournaments.

If there´s a lack of enough natural talent to make him a bigger name in the circuit, he is still a tireless player and very disciplined, that sometimes struggles with match fitness; meaning that
his big run at clay challengers in 2008 when he won four tournaments (Santiago, Florianopolis, Tunis, Rabat) was because he could improve his winning instinct and his performance at competitive tournaments with extreme professionalism while shooting big winning forehands and big serves all around the court. After a good display against Rafa Nadal at the first round of Roland Garros 2008, Bellucci was at his highest ranking (#63) and then struggled a bit to perform in the ATP events on hard courts, slipping in 2009 rankings to position #140 (but made an ATP final at home, Costa do Sauipe, l. to Robredo) until Gstaad, where he played very well with agressive balls defeating Wawrinka, Andreev and Andy Beck to win his first title.

What can we expect for the future? Being a Brazilian player means you can´t expect regularity from Bellucci. He is near his 22th birthday and still shows a lot of bad performances against worst players. When Bellucci is on fire, he shows an arsenal of forehands and backhands that could label him as a top 25 player. However, we can say yet that he is still an unidimensional player that struggles against players with a bit more of diversity in their arsenal and against irregularity. Some people are calling him the "new Fernando Meligeni" (former Roland Garros semifinalist), but if Bellucci improves his technic, tactic and movement and if he fights like Fininho, he could become the second best player Brazil ever had, considering Brazilian players take a bit more of time to mature and to be able to face the tricky opponents in the pro circuit.

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Thomaz Bellucci - player's profile

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