By Richard Pagliaro | Saturday, October 25, 2025
Photo credits: Carine/Wikimedia Commons
Nicolas Mahut will bid farewell to home fans in Paris next week.
The 43-year-old Frenchman will play his final professional tournament at the Rolex Paris Masters armed with a familiar ally: Grigor Dimitrov.
Wild cards Mahut and Dimitrov will play Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Hugo Nys in their Rolex Paris Masters doubles opener.
Former doubles world No. 1 Mahut’s farewell coincides with Dimitrov’s return.
The 37th-ranked Bulgarian has been sidelined more than three months since tearing his pectoral muscle at Wimbledon while leading Jannik Sinner 6-3, 7-5, 2-2 in the round of 16.
Dimitrov recently talked to Carole Bouchard of the Tennis Sweet Spot Substack about his decision to play with Mahut.
“We’ve known each other for so many years; he’s one of the first guys I’ve played with the most, actually, on tour. Of course, there were a lot of challengers, finals, and we had amazing battles. He’s a great guy above all, and honestly, I’m so happy.
Also, they gave us a wild card. I think it’s safe to say that he had a magnificent career, so it’s truly an honour for me to play with him here. Hopefully, I don’t let him down!
I hope I’m going to be ready for that, but we always have fun on the court, and I like the way we function together on the court, so that’s going to be a lot of fun for me. We always wanted to play somewhere, and I think now he reached out clearly, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to play doubles, but again, with the way I was practising, I wasn’t able to tell him early on, and in the last days we kind of put our powers together, so hopefully we can deliver for home.”
Former world No. 3 Dimitrov is also entered in the Paris Masters singles draw where he will play lethal-serving Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in round one. The winner of that match will face either former world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev or Spain’s Jaume Munar in the second round.
The owner of 37 career doubles titles, Mahut partnered one of his opponents, Roger-Vasselin, to win his last doubles championship at the 2022 Florence.Mahut and long-time partner Pierre-Hugues Herbert won the Rolex Paris Masters doubles championship in 2019 defeating Karen Khachanov and Andrey Rublev in the final.
Mahut, who began playing tennis at the age of 5, is famous for playing the longest match in tennis history. At the 2010 Wimbledon, Mahut bowed to John Isner 70-68 in the fifth set in an epic 11 hour, 5-minute encounter. Later, Mahut wrote a book about that marathon titled The Match of My Life.