MADRID – “Look, that’s ‘Tintin’ over there. Mark my words, he’s going to blow everyone away.” Miguel Avendaño, son of the former Spanish Davis Cup captain of the same name, walks through the Club de Campo de Madrid and speaks proudly of his friend Martín Landaluce. It is April 2023, spring in the Spanish capital, and many fans at the Challenger tournament are focusing on this 17-year-old lad, with blond, curly hair like a cherub, aquamarine eyes and an imposing presence, standing 1.93 metres tall. It’s no surprise: “Tintin”, as his friends call him due to his physical resemblance to Hergé’s character, is causing a sensation.
Seven months earlier, in New York, he had won the US Open Junior and shortly afterwards signed for the Rafa Nadal Academy. Now settled in Mallorca and training alongside the 14-time Roland Garros champion, Landaluce rose to number one in the world junior rankings in February 2023. Spain had just popped the cork on Carlos Alcaraz and was already putting another bottle of champagne in the fridge to celebrate Landaluce’s successes.
That understandable euphoria was followed by the crushing reality: the transition to the professional ranks is tough and long. The thing is, there are examples—geniuses like Nadal or Alcaraz in Spain specifically—who can never serve as a yardstick. Whilst a few burst onto the scene, most need to simmer slowly. Landaluce is still immersed in that process, on that path he hopes will culminate in the definitive leap to the elite: moving from winning Challenger tournaments (he already has two) to dreaming of major successes on the professional circuit. It is not an easy transition: his approach is the norm, not the extraordinary feats of Alcaraz today or Nadal a couple of decades ago.
Miami, a new dawn
“Seeing yourself among the best in big stadiums, performing well, reinforces and makes it clear that you’re on the right path,” Landaluce now asserts at the Miami Masters 1000, where this week, now aged 20, he has produced the best tournament of his life. Six consecutive victories, from the qualifiers through to the quarter-finals. The young Madrid native secured five wins against top-100 players: among his victims were Luciano Darderi (ATP No. 18), Karen Khachanov (No. 15) and Sebastian Korda (No. 36, who had knocked out Alcaraz two days earlier). A real warning shot.
“Tournaments like this help you improve a lot,” adds Landaluce in Miami, where only a defeat to Jiri Lehecka 7-6 (7-1), 7-5 has kept him from his first Masters 1000 semi-finals and from finally breaking into the top 100. On Monday, however, he will climb more than 40 places and move within a couple of spots of the top 100. The sky is closer.
There is something about Landaluce that really stands out in a world as demanding as tennis: he is combining his rise to the elite with his university studies. Between training sessions, the Madrid native studies Business Management and Administration. And when he doesn’t have much to revise, he doesn’t get distracted by social media: in fact, he doesn’t have the Instagram or TikTok apps installed on his mobile, but logs in once or twice a week from his computer. It takes up time, he says. And time is money, adds the tennis player.
Instead of getting distracted by endless reels and videos, he immerses himself in the writings of the great ancient philosophers, such as Seneca. ‘I think it helps me a lot with my tennis; it’s a bit of time I dedicate to myself when I’m calm, when there’s no noise and nothing else, and I quiet all my thoughts,’ Landaluce admitted in an interview with ‘Relevo’ a year ago.
Under the guidance of Óscar Burrieza and Esteban Carril, and with the help of Gustavo Marcaccio, who was part of Nadal’s coaching staff towards the end of his career, Landaluce acknowledges that he has been greatly influenced by the 22-time Grand Slam champion. With Nadal still active, Landaluce spent many training sessions with him in Mallorca. “It’s really good for me to talk to him, to get his advice; that’s stuck in my head. The times we trained, I was 15 or 16 and he’d play against me giving it his all. That stayed with me. I’ve got some of his mentality, that fighting spirit of the Spanish,” says Landaluce, whose agent is the same man who manages Alcaraz’s career, Albert Molina of IMG.
The wait has been long, but Landaluce is here now. Miami is his confirmation, his coming-of-age moment. He still has a way to go and defeats to swallow, but he seems to have the right armour to avoid getting burnt out in the process. Whilst the tennis world spins at breakneck speed, eagerly searching for the next viral sensation, Landaluce prefers the rhythm of the classics.
