The derby between blue wild cards staged in first round of the 2024 Italian Internationals awards Matteo Gigante. First Capitoline victory for him, in an authentic confrontation between people very close also by place of birth (Giulio Zeppieri is from Latina) 7-6(2) 6-4 the final score, and in the second round he faces the Argentine Francisco Cerundolonumber 20 in seeding.
In the first set Gigante starts at full strength and immediately scores a run of 12 points to 4, which allows him to immediately go to a heavy 3-0 lead. Zeppieri entered the match by recovering one of the two late breaks in the fourth game and then completed the comeback in the eighth game, making it 4-4. Zeppieri himself has to erase a break point in both the ninth and eleventh games, but then fails to take advantage of four set points in the twelfth. The tiebreak was dominated by Gigante, who scored six consecutive points from 0-1 and then closed at 7-2 after 69 minutes.
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In the second half Gigante erases a break point at 30-40 in the third game and Zeppieri does the same in the fourth game. There were no other breaking opportunities, then in the eighth game, with Gigante leading 4-3 and with Zeppieri serving, but trailing 15-30, the rain came to interrupt the Italian derby. At the restart the two hold serve, then, when everything seems to be leading towards even hotter phases, the Lazio player misses everything, including the very easy last crosscourt forehand at 30-40. Thus goes the man who was born in Rome.
For Gigante, greater ability to contain errors: 23 winners and 38 free throws against Zeppieri’s 18-42, who thus has to postpone the assault to the upper levels. What his compatriot will try (but it is very hard) to do, who with the sound of 70%-57% of points won with the first and 54%-48% with the second will go in search of a step inside the 130th of the ranking ATP.
