Berrettini was able to make an unprecedented magic: even he was literally stunned.
Sports, you know, is like that. With the exception of some disciplines that contemplate a tiebreaker, on the court there is always someone who wins and someone else who, instead, loses. And on Wednesday it was Matteo Berrettini’s turn to play the part of the “victim,” after nearly three hours of play under the scorching Miami sun. At certain temperatures that put a strain, as you may recall, on the Roman’s physique.
The Wimbledon 2021 finalist almost fainted, but despite not feeling too well he still wanted to continue playing. He took the hit, however, so much so that this little moment of his défaillance opened the door wide for his opponent Andy Murray’s comeback. The signs for a great comeback are all there, at any rate, and that is what matters. Matteo is there with his body and especially with his head, intent as he is on getting back on track and living out his last years as a tennis player as a protagonist and not as a spectator.
In Miami we saw flashes of the old Berrettini, of that lion all serve and forehand that several times in the past has put the courts on fire. Which gives us hope about the future of the former Italian number 1, who has been stuck in the pits for too long due to a fragile physique that has not helped in his climb to success and ranking.
What a shot Berrettini: a plunge into the past
And there was also, at one point, what we would not hesitate to call a real sleight of hand. Matteo against Andy experimented, and a lot too, pulling out of his hat, at one point, a shot that made everyone, present and not, daydream.
Doing his part to keep the one-hander ALIVE @MattBerrettini MiamiOpen pic. twitter.com/NbBqUWMJfw
– Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 20, 2024
At 4-2, in the first set, he scored the best point of the match by fielding a flawless, old-fashioned one-handed backhand. Clean, elegant, in one word, perfect. Very different from the usual, and not exactly beautiful, Berrettini-style backhand. The audience reacted with thunderous applause and the cameras, just at that moment, framed an illustrious spectator, namely Paolo Maldini, enchanted like everyone else by a surprise shot now vanished, unfortunately, from the top ten.
A presence that was not at all accidental, that of the former footballer: “Fortunately,” Matteo had revealed some time ago, “I am surrounded by a lot of strong sportsmen who love me and who have been injured, and have helped me, one of them is Paolo Maldini, with him I talked a lot, it gave me a lot of confidence to talk to him, he made me realize that there is still a lot to give, that the career is still very long and that the feelings I feel are still good. “