Berrettini comes back to Gstaad and flies to the semifinals

“I can accept defeat, but I can’t agree to give up trying.” Who knows if Matteo Berrettini, when he found himself just two points from a bad defeat in the quarter-finals in Gstaad against Pedro Martinez, thought of that sentence by Michael Jordan. The fact is that the Roman tennis player, 5-1 in the tie break of the second set with the first already gone, did not agree to lose. And he didn’t. At the end of a game frankly played at a level far from what he has accustomed us to, Berretto has managed to grab the semifinal of the Swiss tournament, where he will find Dominic Thiem, who is trying to rebuild himself after more than a year and is finally returning. to win.

What a comeback

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Character and determination, even a little luck, but the good news for Berrettini ends here, at least for this quarter-final, because net of everything, the Roman really struggled. On the other hand, however, these are the games that a champion wins, even on days when everything goes wrong. And this was one of those days: ineffective service, many errors, less functional response than usual in the first two partials. For Martinez it was enough and advanced to do what he does best, which is not to make disasters and play as clean as possible. After winning the first set 6-3, the Spaniard needed a simple point to have 5 match points and, in practice, close or close the game, but something jammed. From that moment on, it was a solo by Berrettini, who not only won the tie break but in the third set flew immediately with a series of 14 points to 2, up to 4-0 which closed the practice, then dragged until 6-1. In the third set Matteo went up with his serve (at the end 15 ace to 2), and started making fewer mistakes, taking home the next round. Against Thiem, even if in a “reduced” version, it will certainly take something more.