Fognini had no mercy: he literally butchered him.
Some excerpts made the rounds on the web, charged and emotionally charged as they were. But, by and large, there is not a single passage in Matteo Berrettini’s love letter to tennis that did not move the users who came across it. The Atp Tour found it so beautiful that they edited a video, with his words in the background, and then spread it through social channels.
Those lines, written in his own hand and from the heart, perfectly summarize, in effect, the often conflicting but nevertheless pure and genuine feelings a player has towards the sport to which he has immolated his existence. Inside that of the Roman giant are all his dreams, the suffering he felt when injuries forced him to stay away from that world. There are the hopes for the future and there are also all the lessons he says he has learned from this unique sport.
And there is also, truth be told, a passage that left everyone dumbfounded, if only because it shows how certain matches, more than others, remain etched in the minds of players for life. A passage that makes us smile today but must have been a watershed, in some way, in Berrettini’s career, if Matteo intended to refer to it in his beautiful love letter.
Berrettini does not forget: he even put it in black and white
After recounting how his passion for tennis was born-that is, within the walls of his home, when he was pretending to be Federer and his brother Jacopo Djokovic-the Roman giant pulled a bittersweet memory out of his hat.
“In 2017 in Rome, in my home tournament – this is the passage in question – I lost badly to Fognini, he slaughtered me. On that occasion you hit me hard but at the same time I felt so many emotions and great feelings that I wanted to relive. The rest is history.” It was, that, the first round of the Internazionali d’Italia 7 years ago, following which the tennis player from Arma di Taggia, at that time decidedly more experienced and popular than Matteo, found himself before the then world number 1, namely Andy Murray.
Nearly two decades will have passed since that day, but it is nice that Berrettini still remembers the feelings of that match. Because as much defeats as victories have contributed, that’s for sure, to making him the champion he is today.
