ATP Vienna: Matteo Berrettini fights, but Carlos Alcaraz wins: the blue out in the quarterfinals

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The comment

It was a lot of fun 150-minutes that made us live on the central Vienna Carlos Alcaraz and Matteo Berrettini.

The first set, which finished 6-1, was all Spanish. With an aggressiveness and ferocity worthy of the best predators, mixed with a chess player’s lucidity, the 18-year-old from El Palmar suffocated Berrettini and forced him to 20 minutes (this is the duration of the set) as a sparring partner.

But then, slowly, Matteo decided to enter the game. By fueling slowly, like a petrol truck, he fixed his serve – increasing the number of aces and winning primes – and used Alcaraz’s vehemence to his advantage. With a few more cuts and some defensive shrewdness, the number 7 in the ranking saved four break points and brought the contest to the tie-break. There, with all the pressure on him, he played with experience and drew the game.

In the last set, with the inertia that had clearly moved from Spain to Italy, Alcaraz took the break by surprise, only to get lost in a glass of water and give Matteo the chance to counter-break. At 4-4, with the tension pumping to a thousand, we reached the second tie-break of the day. Berrettini played it well, but Carlos Alcaraz took the mini-break at the opening and kept it until the final whistle.

Overall a good match for Matteo, who played on par with a guy who is in better shape than him. The only regret is for that first set: with a more reactive approach it could have ended differently.