ATP Marseille, Musetti knocked out against Machac

After winning in the first round against Marterer, Lorenzo loses against the Czech number 66 in the ranking: he will return to the field in Rotterdam

Francesco Sessa

Lorenzo Musetti doesn’t engage in second gear. For the fourth time out of four in this complicated start to 2024, the tennis player from Carrara stops in a tournament after winning the opening match: it had happened in Hong Kong, Adelaide and the Australian Open, now it’s the turn of the 250 in Marseille. After winning against Maximilian Marterer, with a 6-4 6-2 result of a fluctuating match, the Italian number 2 lost against the 66th player in the ranking, the Czech Tomas Machac: 6-3 6-2, in a Quick and little fought match.

the match

There were even four breaks suffered by Musetti in the match: the serve continues to give little to Lorenzo in this first match of the season. In the first set a break was enough, in the sixth game, to direct the partial towards Machac, who in the second broke the serve from his opponent three times in a row, in the first three rounds serving Carrarino: the counterbreak by Musetti in the second game. All this despite an excellent percentage of first players on the court in the second set: 76%, but with 44% of points with the first team (7/16) and 20% (1/5) with the second team. While Machac confirms the good things he showed in the first weeks of 2024: at the Australian Open he reached the third round, also beating Tiafoe before the defeat against Khachanov, now he will play the quarterfinals in Marseille against one of Hurkacz or Shevchenko, with the dream of reaching the first semi-final of his career at ATP level.

ROTTERDAM TIME

As happened in 2023, this start to the season is also not easy for Musetti: last year he went out in the first round at the Australian Open and had only one victory in three clay-court tournaments in South America. For 2024 the choice fell on hard courts: now that Marseille is already behind us, Lorenzo will move to Rotterdam for the 500 tournament in which Jannik Sinner will also play. There are therefore no longer any Italians in the French 250 tournament: Giulio Zeppieri was also on the scoreboard, having been brought back after losing in the qualifiers, but in the first round he lost to the Chinese Zhizhen Zhang.



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