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Thomaz Cocchiarali Bellucci (born December 30, 1987 in Tietê, Brazil) is a professional Brazilian tennis player. He used a string of Challenger tournament victories early in 2008 to break into the top 100 in the world as a 20-year-old.
Juniors career
Bellucci reached a high of #15 in the world two weeks after his 17th birthday, in January, 2005.[1]
Professional career
2007
Bellucci began 2007 ranked #582, but began a rapid ascent in June to finish the year at #202.
2008
The 20-year-old Bellucci continued his rapid rise early in 2008. The first week of the year,
ranked #202, he made it to the quarterfinals of a Challenger in São Paulo.
Bellucci had little success in his next few tournaments, but in February he got back on track,
beating #145 Pablo Andujar while qualifying into an ATP stop in Buenos Aires and then
recording his first-ever ATP match win, over #83 Werner Eschauer, before bowing out in
the next round to #25 Juan Ignacio Chela. The following week, he beat #130 Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo and #140 Eduardo Schwank en route to his first-ever Challenger title,
in Santiago, Chile, to improve his ranking to #145. The next week, he beat #162 Dick Norman before losing in a Challenger second round match.
April - May: 17 match Challenger winning streak
In April, Bellucci began an amazing string of Challenger match wins in singles play.
First he won a minor Challenger in Florianopolis, Brazil, and made the final in doubles.
Two weeks later, he ran his singles streak to 10 matches while winning a major Challenger
in Tunis, beating #155 Andreas Beck, #363 Martin Verkerk, #136 Paul Capdeville, #113
Nicolas Massu, and #175 Dusan Vemic, and also won the doubles title.
Those wins got him into the top 100 for the first time at #100.
The following week, at a minor Challenger in Rabat, Morocco, he ran his streak to 15 matches
while beating #136 Capdeville again, #96 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez,
and #119 Martin Vassallo-Arguello to win the title and get his ranking to #81. His streak ended
at 17 matches the next week, after beating #128 Rik de Voest to reach the quarterfinals of a challenger in Bordeaux, France, when he finally lost to #111 Igor Kunitsyn, improving Bellucci's
ranking to #75.
French Open
In late May, he qualified into his first French Open, lost to 3-time defending champion and ATP #2 Rafael Nadal in the first round.
Wimbledon
Bellucci achieved his first win in a Grand Slam event, defeating Igor Kunitsyn in four sets.