Joao Lucas Reis is 1st out gay man in Grand Slam qualifying, hits world ranking high
Brazil’s Joao Lucas Reis continues to break barriers in tennis after making his Flushing Meadows debut in qualifying. The post Joao Lucas Reis is 1st out gay man in Grand Slam qualifying, hits world ranking high appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
Joao Lucas Reis has become the first man to compete in a qualifying at the US Open or at any Grand Slam event while being publicly out as gay.
Reis, who came out via a photo with his actor and model boyfriend Guilherme posted to Instagram in December 2024, secured a spot in the first round of qualifying for the U.S. Open.
He was elevated off the waiting list and into the preliminary round of the tournament in New York City as an alternate, all in the same week that he hit a career-high singles ranking of 230.
Reis has had a strong season, chalking up 42 wins on the pro circuit, including a Challenger title in Santa Fe, Argentina, in June.
Related
Tennis pro João Lucas Reis da Silva continues hot streak since coming out as gay
João Lucas Reis da Silva won the ATP Challenger de Santa Fe championship during his first Pride month as an out gay man.
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly playbook is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
Also in Pride Month, he moved past his previous best ranking of 259, which he had achieved back in May 2023.
Remarkably, Reis has climbed nearly 200 places in the last four months. As of mid-April, he was ranked No. 429.
On Tuesday, he lost, 6-2, 6-1, to Belgium’s Alexander Blockx in just under an hour on Court no. 9 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, but there was certainly no shame in that. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Blockx is one of the hottest properties in men’s tennis. The 20-year-old, ranked 116th in the world, won in the main draw at the Cincinnati Open earlier this month — his first victory on the ATP Tour.
Joao Lucas Reis comfortable after coming out
It’s hard not to consider at least some correlation between Reis’ recent performances on court and the comfort he has found off it.
There are the cute comments left on Guilherme’s Instagram posts, such as “te amo” and love heart emojis, and interviews he has given to different media outlets.
In April, Reis spoke to Clay Magazine and said there was a noticeable shift when he started to open up to family and friends a few years ago.
“A long time ago, I was someone who didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, and when I started talking, when I felt calmer about myself and started talking to my friends, to everyone, and I saw that the reaction was one of protection, of support.
“I felt calmer. It did me a lot of good.”
Asked to expand, he referred to the impact within tennis, too.
“I started to live much more relaxed, much more relaxed… My relationship with my coaches improved a lot, with my family too. I could talk about things that I didn’t talk about before.”
Which other men’s pro tennis players have come out as gay?
Of all men’s sports, the representation of gay and bi men in professional tennis history has been particularly low.
Of players who have been ranked in the ATP’s Top 100, Brian Vahaly is the only man to have come out publicly as gay.
He twice reached the second round of the US Open in 2002 and 2003. In the latter year, he reached his career-high world ranking of 53rd.
Vahaly retired in 2007 and shared his story for the first time in 2017 via a podcast interview.
Bobby Blair played pro tennis in the 1980s but didn’t come out as gay until he wrote a memoir in 2014, when he was in his late 40s.
Francisco Rodriguez played pro in the 2000s, but like Blair, never reached the highest levels of the sport and retired after his career ended.
In the amateur era in the 20th century, the stories of Bill Tilden — a seven-time US Open winner in the 1920s — and Gottfried van Cramm, who reached the tournament final in 1937, are more complex when compared to what it means to be LGBTQ and out in the modern day.
As for Reis, he said back in April that his ambition had been to play in a Grand Slam.
Although he wasn’t able to make it through what would have been three qualifying matches to reach the main draw, he can celebrate ongoing progress in the sport, in terms of his own world ranking and for the gay community he represents.
Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.
The post Joao Lucas Reis is 1st out gay man in Grand Slam qualifying, hits world ranking high appeared first on Outsports.
