Benchakroun Shines Back Home During an Action-Packed Summer

Over 4,000 miles away from the USTA National Campus, UCF junior Mehdi Benchakroun is embarking on yet another summer back in his native country of Morocco.

Following a remarkable 2024 campaign under first-year head coach Lloyd Bruce-Burgess and his assistant, Kareem Allaf, Benchakroun was one of many Knights to grow their game and set the groundwork for the remainder of their time at the collegiate level.

In 2023, the then-freshman went 9-10 in singles as the squad concluded their decade in the American Athletic Conference. As Bruce-Burgess sought to improve the lineup, the Knights’ competition would provide increasingly difficult challenges in the Big 12.

Following UCF’s historic triumph over Florida in the first round of the NCAA First Round, Benchakroun’s victory on court six became his team-leading 16th of the year after a dominating campaign in both non-conference and Big 12 play, tallying a 4-2 record in the latter.

Playing in a mixture of singles and doubles events, Benchakroun has consistently advanced into the knockout round with a string of impressive qualifying performances. With three tournaments in each Tunisia and Morocco thus far, the first four consecutive qualifications into the first round came at the M15 Tanger where he bested a pair of fellow countrymen in Ali Missoum and Abdelaziz Guennouni.

A week later in Monastir, Benchakroun defeated three opponents in the qualifying stage before besting America’s Darwin Branch in the first round and Portugal’s Pedro Araujo in the second to advance to his first quarterfinals of the summer, before replicating his performance once again in Monastir seven days later with another advancement to the final eight.

While his growth in singles is evident, he has also stressed the importance of doubles play. Alongside fellow Knight and Moroccan, Yassine Dlimi, the tandem advanced to back-to-back finals in Rabat and Casablanca to commence summer action.

There have been a plethora of noteworthy triumphs across his action-packed season. He defeated Darwin Branch, who was once the fourth-ranked world junior and recently went toe-to-toe with Rafael Nadal in the Madrid Masters. Paired with wins over No. 569 Pedro Arujo and Danil Panarin, who leads Vanderbilt on court one and took home the 2023 Orange Bowl, the Knight has proven his big-match prowess

Overall, Benchakroun has amassed a 17-6 record across 23 singles bouts to go along with a solid 10-5 record in doubles contests. Here is a list of each of the rising junior’s pro tournaments this summer:

M15 Monastir (Tunisia) - July 22-28

• Singles: 4-1 (Second Round)

M15 Monastir (Tunisia) - July 15-21

• Singles: 5-1 (Quarterfinals)
• Doubles: 1-1 (Quarterfinals)

M15 Monastir (Tunisia) - July 8-14

• Singles: 5-1 (Quarterfinals)
• Doubles: 3-1 (Finals)

M15 Tanger (Morocco) - June 24-30

• Singles: 2-1 (First Round)
• Doubles: 0-1 (First Round)

M15 Casablanca (Morocco) - June 17-23

• Singles: 0-1 (First Round)
• Doubles: 1-3 (Finals)

M15 Rabat (Morocco) - June 10-16

• Singles: 1-1 (Second Round)
• Doubles: 3-1 (Finals)

Having been ranked 1,583 in the world ITF singles rankings to conclude the 2023 slate, Benchakroun has since climbed to 1,257 as of August 5. In doubles, he is just two spots away from breaking into the top 1,000 once again.