After two hours and 20 minutes of a match that was infinitely more complicated than expected, Lorenzo Musetti finds a way to beat the Argentine Juan Manuel Cerundolo (brother of the better known Francisco) by 7-6(4) 7-6(4). The Tuscan thus makes his successful debut at the Challenger 175 in Cagliari, aka Sardinia Open, and in the quarter-finals he will find one of the Portuguese Nuno Borgesto the best season of his career, and the Japanese Yoshihito Nishioka.
In the first set Musetti managed to start well, thanks to the break obtained in the third game. The Italian plays in an overall good manner, but when he finds himself at 4-1 the rain, already problematic during the day, begins to become more insistent. After 10 minutes of uncertainty on the chairs the two resume, but the Tuscan, from 4-1 0-30, falls apart. This is also because Cerundolo finds a way to control the situation from the baseline, where he glues himself and never leaves a respite. Result: counterbreak with a long forehand from the Italian. Still at 5-4 Musetti does not exploit a response and, a few minutes later, he is the one who has to save himself from the 5-5 30-40, when the Argentine misses the response. We go to the tie-break, which however begins after 20 minutes and a downpour. Carrara’s class of 2002 dominates, finding a couple of points from him: a great backhand passer for 6-3 and another on the run to close on 7-4.
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This outcome of the opening set, after an hour and 18 minutes, seems capable of definitively launching Musetti, who immediately gets the break with a game that appears decidedly more lively than in the previous phases. Overall, up until 5-1 everything seemed to go smoothly for the Tuscan. The problem, however, is that what follows doesn’t go smoothly. In fact, sudden difficulties arise, between partial misses and Cerundolo who has no intention of giving up. Point after point, the Argentine manages to climb to 5-5, only to then surrender the serve to zero once again. Finished? Not by chance, because there is the counterbreak again which ensures that such a difficult partial ends in a tie-break. Not only that: it ends with exactly the same score as the first, and again with a Musetti who manages to be incisive just enough to end a match that ended in much longer than expected.
What can comfort Musetti is certainly the fact that he served normally with the first serve (69% of points won despite 59% entering the court) and also with the second serve (59%). For the Argentinian 61% (67%) and 50%.
