MADRID – Terence Atmane has reached his limit. His left thigh is cramping. He can’t walk. His right thigh is failing him, too. He leans against the wall at the back of the court and then collapses to the ground. He screams in pain. His body is shattered. He won the first set 7-6 (7-3) against Ugo Humbert and is down 4-2 in the second-set tiebreak.
“It was like getting through hell,” Atmane himself admitted a while later in the mixed zone of the Madrid Masters 1000. The strange, impressive thing is that the Frenchman took the match in that second set: he overcame the physical collapse to win 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (7-5) and advance to the third round, where he will face Alexander Zverev.
This is insane #atmane #humbert pic.twitter.com/P1YAo7OppY
— apstep (@apstepof) April 25, 2026
Everything was going smoothly for Atmane on Court 5 of the Caja Mágica. He was playing a very solid match until, at 5-4 in the second set, his muscles began to seize up. “I started to cramp here, after it was there, it was going everywhere,” he recounted. Doctors and physios stepped in, and many in the stands feared a retirement. But Atmane knew that cramps come and go—that they can leave you immobile one moment and vanish the next.
Basically, until 7-6, 5-4, everything was perfect. I think that I was a bit stressed to finish the match and really tight, so I started to serve on the first point of the 5-4 and I started to cramp. Obviously, when the cramps were coming I was a bit panicking because I’m not really used to it, so I started to panic and I couldn’t breathe. I was just trying to survive.”
“Just trying to fight as hard as I can, trying to recover as much as I can between points, trying to breathe, trying to take my time between points, trying to recover as much as I can and playing by the rules. Unfortunately, 25 seconds sometimes can go really quick, so I was just trying to always be on time to serve and always be there to return,” continued Atmane, currently ranked world No. 47. “Sometimes I was feeling like I was about to cramp fully and sometimes I was feeling great. So it was a bit complicated for me to be able to balance that, but I think I tried my best today to be able to get through.”
This is insane #atmane #humbert pic.twitter.com/P1YAo7OppY
— apstep (@apstepof) April 25, 2026
“If I had to go to a third set, I was trying to do the same, trying to recover as much as I can, to drink, to eat… And then after some time the cramps were going away, so it was just for me a question of time to be able to come back with full potential.”
Atmane, 24, finished the match however he could, but his physical troubles didn’t end there. “Right now I feel limited physically, obviously, because I didn’t do my recovery yet. I was cramping in the shower as well, so it was tough to get here.But now it’s going to be the job of my physio to make me recover as much as he can, driving me about what I have to eat, what time I have to sleep and trying to get ready for Monday now. That’s going to be an important one.”
The handshake at the net was quite cold between the two French players. Humbert was visibly upset—with himself and with Atmane. “I totally understand that you can be upset and that you can be mad after what happened today,” Atmane admitted. “I think that you can be mad. I think there are reasons for that, so I cannot blame him, I cannot be mad at him and I can only apologise for that, because it’s not what I wanted. Obviously, I just wanted to play my match. But yeah, I totally understand his handshake, and that’s a bit sad the way he finished it, but it is what it is.”
