There is only one player in the field of the 31st TERRA WORTMANN OPEN who has ever reached the final at Wimbledon: the Italian Matteo Berrettini. And he is not seeded this year after a long break due to injury and a drop in the world rankings. This could have meant that he would have had to play one of the stars such as Jannik Sinner or Alexander Zverev in the first round. But the 28-year-old was lucky. He got a qualifier.
However, he found it unexpectedly difficult against Alex Michelsen from the USA in the first set. Especially at the beginning. The dispersion of his shots was high and the giant from Rome made mistake after mistake. He was quickly trailing 0:3. Perhaps the final he lost in Stuttgart on Sunday was still in his bones. Or he was thrown off his stride by the fact that something had flown into his eye before his first service game and it took him quite a while to fix his eye with water and a lot of patience.
But as they say: he played against a qualifier, and a very inexperienced one at that, because Alex Michelsen is only 19 years old. But he did surprisingly well. Berrettini was particularly troubled by his good serve. He kept looking to the box for help. But the spirited former top ten player kept his cool. And in the seventh game, the talent from California invited him to break point with a double fault. Berrettini grabbed it. At 5:5, he had another chance to break but failed to capitalise. It remained tight in the tie-break. Because Berrettini was the second to serve, he automatically had the first set point at 6:5. And that's when the veteran showed his skills, converting with a passing shot.
The second set was then more characterised by the difference in class between the two. Two breaks gave the Italian an unchallenged victory. He converted the match point with a one-handed backhand - which he doesn't actually play - in a spectacular and completely surprising manner. He can now collect more points in the round of 16 in Halle against the next American, Marcos Giron, to get back to where he undoubtedly belongs: among the world's best.
