Standing between Canada and a spot in the Davis Cup Qualifiers Second Round this week in Vancouver will be Brazil. The 18th-ranked nation in the Davis Cup competition will make the trip north for the first time since 2003.
Like Canada, Brazil will be without several of its top-ranked players, most notably world No. 34 Joao Fonseca. In fact, the visitors will not have a singles player at this tie ranked inside the Top 200.
But this is Davis Cup and players have a tendency to play above their rankings when representing their country. This Brazilian team should not be taken lightly. Especially their experienced doubles team. Let’s meet the squad lining up across the net in Vancouver.
Joao Lucas Reis da Silva
Reis da Silva will be making his Davis Cup debut this week and will be doing so as his nation’s No. 1 singles player. The 25-year-old is currently ranked 207th in the world, having reached a career-high of No. 187 last year. He has never played a match on the ATP Tour.
A five-time singles titlist on the ITF Tour, Reis da Silva is coming off a career year where he won the two biggest titles of his career so far. In June, he won the ITF M25 event in Coquimbo, Chile. Two weeks later, he won his first ATP Challenger Tour title in Santa Fe, Argentina. Both of those titles came on clay. However, da Silva does have two ITF titles on hard courts to his name.
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The Recife-native has had more success in his career in doubles, winning 10 titles, two of which were at the ATP Challenger level. The most recent of those victories, last year in Punte del Este, came with his Davis Cup teammate Gustavo Heide.
Gustavo Heide
The youngest member of the Brazilian team, the 23-year-old reached his career-high singles ranking of No. 142 in 2024 and currently sits at No. 253. He has a career 4-7 record on the ATP Tour, with his most recent appearance in an ATP Tour main draw coming almost a year ago in Santiago, Chile, where he reached the second round with a win over countryman Thiago Seyboth Wild.
Heide has won at least one singles title every year since 2021, bringing home nine overall on the ATP Challenger and ITF Tours, as well as seven doubles titles. In 2025, he won two singles titles, an ITF M25 and an ATP Challenger, both on home soil. All 16 of his professional titles, singles and doubles, came on clay.
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If both teams nominate their highest-ranked singles players, Heide would play Canada’s Liam Draxl on Friday. The pair already met once in 2026, with Draxl scraping out a three-set win in the first round of the ATP Challenger event in Noumea, New Caledonia.
Matheus Pucinelli De Almeida
Pucinelli de Almeida made his Davis Cup debut five years ago at age 19 and has posted a 2-1 record in the competition. He competed in last year’s Qualifiers First Round, falling against France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard.
The 24-year-old has not played a main-draw match on the ATP Tour since February 2022. However, he reached the second round of that tournament in Santiago, Chile, with a win over then-up-and-coming Holger Rune in the first round.
On the ITF Tour, Pucinelli De Almeida has 10 titles to his name, six in singles and four in doubles. Nine of the 10 titles came on clay. Three of his doubles titles came alongside Reis da Silva. His lone ATP Challenger title in singles came back in 2023.
Rafael Matos and Orlando Luz
Doubles is the strength of this Brazilian team and it starts with Matos. At No. 34 in the ATP Doubles rankings, Matos is the highest-ranked doubles player in the tie for either team. His regular partner on tour currently is his Davis Cup teammate, Luz, who is the second-highest-ranked doubles player in the tie at No. 53.
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The Brazilian tandem are fresh off a quarter-final appearance at the Australian Open. That run included an upset win over the fifth-seeded team of Kevin Krawietz and Tim Putz. They also reached the quarter-finals of their first event of the season in Brisbane.
Matos is an 11-time titlist in doubles on the ATP Tour, having lifted a pair of trophies last year and three in 2024. One of those 2024 titles came in Bastad alongside Luz.
That win together was the only tour-level title for Luz so far in his career, although he has no shortage of hardware in his trophy cabinet. Luz has won 46 ATP Challenger and ITF doubles titles to bring his career total to 47. He won 12 titles in the 2021 season alone.
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It has been nearly five years since Luz last suited up for Brazil in Davis Cup competition. His lone previous appearance for the national team came in September 2021, when the 27-year-old secured a singles win to help Brazil beat Lebanon 4-0 in the World Group I.
With 10 Davis Cup matches under his belt, Matos has more experience in this competition than all of his teammates combined. He has represented Brazil every year since 2021, compiling a 7-3 record in doubles. Last year, he lost his doubles match in the tie against France but bounced back in the World Group I against Greece, helping his country to a 3-1 victory.
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The Davis Cup returns to Canada in February as Canada hosts Brazil in the Qualifiers First Round in Vancouver, Feb. 6-7 at UBC's Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. Tickets are on sale. Get yours now!
Feature Photo : Sarah-Jade Champagne
