Unstoppable Berrettini, the Roman tennis player has really outdone himself this time: what joy the official announcement.
That he couldn’t be the same Matteo Berrettini of three years ago was completely taken for granted. He has played so little over the past year that it will be a while before he recovers across the board. The heart is there, the strength as well: he “just” needs to find the temperament to face certain battles, like yesterday’s in Stuttgart.
The match against Roman Safiullin went on for about three hours and it was clear to everyone that the Roman, at some point, had run out of gas. But it fits. It’s one thing to train, albeit at a high level, it’s another to face a live opponent who does everything, moreover, to get in your way, having the means. And that is exactly what his rival tried to do until the last minute, except to abdicate at the moment when anyone, in all honesty, had thought Berrettini perhaps doomed by now.
But we had forgotten, perhaps, how much heart the Roman is capable of putting into it every time he takes the court. Fortunately, he took care of it to refresh our memory, winning this first battle on grass that exhausted us and him but, fortunately, had a happy ending. A double happy ending, actually.
Berrettini is unstoppable: mind-numbing record
Matteo at the Boss Open in Stuttgart outdid himself. In every sense of the word. Not only because he beat a very tough opponent and won his first match in a big way after more than 60 days off, but because he even managed the feat of breaking one of his many personal records.
If in 2021, in Cincinnati, he had put up a beauty of 25 aces, in the match against Albert Ramos-Vinolas that earned him access to the Masters 1000 round of 16, yesterday he did even better. He set a new record in best-of-three-set matches, posting, open your ears, an impressive 27 aces. Yes, you read that right: 27 balls completely escaped Safiullin’s control.
He outdid himself, then, in the true sense of the word, the blue hammer, who found in his crazy serve a crucial lifeline in a match that, otherwise, might have had a different ending. And let’s just hope that his best shot does not betray him in the continuation of this tournament.