At 28-years-old, Jaume Munar is having the best season of his career. The Spaniard has not yet reached a tour-level final, nevermind a final, and has still not broken into the top 50. But he has also never been closer. Indeed, he has shown his quality with recent wins over top-10 opposition including Lorenzo Musetti, Ben Shelton (twice), and Daniil Medvedev, and has played great matches against the world’s very best opponents, including testing fellow Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz last week at Queen’s Club.
Unfortunately, there’s a weakness that’s been holding him back, preventing him from making that leap into the upper echelon of the game. Unfortunately for Munar, it’s not a technical problem which suggests it might be harder to fix. The numbers make that plain.
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In 2025, Munar has a 15–16 record. That’s perfectly respectable for a player of his ability at this level. However, there’s a huge difference in how his wins and losses have come about. Of the 31 matches he’s played, 17 went to a deciding set. Munar managed to win just six of those, suffering 11 losses. Another worrying trend emerges when looking at close sets. When the set ended 6-0, 6-1, 6-2, or 6-3 — whether for him or against him — his record is 4–3. On the other hand, in sets that ended 6-4, 7-5, or 7-6, his record drops to 2–8. He has also lost all four deciding tiebreaks. That looks less like a coincidence and more like a pattern.
Ironically, he won his first match to go the distance in 2025 and it was a great win, coming against Lorenzo Musetti in Hong Kong (2-6 7-6 7-5). But he lost in the next round, 6-4 in the third, against Alexandre Muller. Then, over the span of a month and a half, he lost three deciding tiebreaks: against Casper Ruud in Dallas (after serving for the match), against Kei Nishikori in Indian Wells, and finally against Monfils in Miami, where he also served for the match but won just one of the last 12 points.
Things didn’t improve on clay. He lost in the Monte-Carlo qualifiers to Daniel Altmaier, 7-5 in the third, and then to Quentin Halys in Geneva, 7-6 in the third. The most painful loss was probably against Arthur Fils at the French Open. Munar lost the first two sets, then won the next two and went up a break in the fifth. Fils responded, but Munar had five break points at 4-4 to serve for the match. The end result? 6-4 Fils in the fifth.
Munar lost 7-5 in the third against Alcaraz at Queen’s Club, again from a break up in the decider. His only ‘clutch’ win in that whole stretch came in Rome against the Chilean Marcelo Tomas Barrios Vera, who was up 5-3 in the third but was then struck down by cramps with Munar winning 13 of the last 16 points.
It’s certainly not as bad as it sounds, as some of these losses came against some of the world’s best. But it must still be bitterly frustrating to get so close yet consistently fall short of closing out the win. Munar’s improvements are obvious, and if he keeps playing like he has for most of the year, it may just be a matter of time. However, turning things around psychologically isn’t going to be an easy task. What he needs is nothing short of a big win — maybe one sealed in a deciding tiebreak. So far, though, he’s earned the title of “least clutch player of 2025″ and until that changes, there will be a hard ceiling on what Munar can achieve in the game.
Main photo credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
