Vilariño and Rubio chase second 2026 title in Baku

Nacho Vilariño and Gonzalo Rubio entered FIP Bronze Baku II as the men’s No. 1 seeds and the pair to catch, carrying 2,515 team points into a tournament that runs July 1-5 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The main draw was set to begin Friday, July 3, and the champions will collect 40 ranking points from the €8,500 event.

Their bid in Baku is built on a sharp start to the season. Vilariño and Rubio won FIP Bronze Mumbai II without dropping a set, then finished the job with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Thijs Roper and Willy Tiger Slaryd in the final. They had already backed that up with a 6-4, 7-6 semifinal win against Agustin Reca and Victor Tur Checa, and the Mumbai title was Rubio’s first CUPRA FIP Tour title of 2026. A second trophy together in the same season would do more than extend the roll, it would confirm that the pairing is turning early chemistry into a dependable points source.

The Baku draw gave them a familiar threat on the other side of the bracket. Tonet Sans and Gustavo Nunes, the No. 2 seeds, arrived after reaching the final of the earlier FIP Bronze Baku event in April, when Daniel Luna and Albert Trillas beat them 3-6, 6-3, 6-0. That result left Sans and Nunes as proven finalists who still need a breakthrough at the business end, while Vilariño and Rubio came in as the duo already holding the season’s cleanest title run. Andrés Fernández Lancha and Kamal Huseynov were seeded third, and Juan Pablo Dametto and Felipe Calleja took the No. 4 slot after winning FIP Bronze Chile III and later FIP Silver Dubai. Dametto, born in Córdoba on March 27, 1999, has become one of the circuit’s quieter but steady movers.

The women’s field opened with Daria Kucheriavaia and Barbara Las Heras as the No. 1 seeds, backed by 1,110 team points. They had already won FIP Bronze Abu Dhabi on June 1, beating Catherine Rose and Lucia Perez 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the final after a three-set semifinal win over Elsa Terranova and Angelina Neizvestnaya. Las Heras also reached the round of 16 at the Premier Padel P1 in Valencia in June, a useful marker of her level across tour tiers, and she was ranked No. 62 with 924 points on June 29. Patri Ribeiro and Dora Andrejszki were seeded second, Costanca Gorito and Steffi Merah third, and Patricia Araus with Polina Yumasheva fourth. FIP’s note on Novela Putria becoming the first Indonesian player to win a CUPRA FIP Tour title in Yogyakarta underlined the same point Baku is testing now: on this circuit, one result can quickly turn into momentum, and momentum can become a pairing’s identity.