Crazy match, enthusiastic fans: Canadian Denis Shapovalov (ATP 31) and Italian Flavio Cobolli (ATP 24) provided the very best tennis entertainment on the schauinsland-reisen court. In a match with many twists and turns and a total of nine breaks, Cobolli won 7:6, 4:6 and 7:6. The 23-year-old from Florence, who has already won the titles in Bucharest and at the 500 tournament in Hamburg this year, is now in the quarter-finals of the 32nd TERRA WORTMANN OPEN for the second time.
The first set alone was worth the entrance fee. Cobolli broke his opponent with relative ease in the very first game, only to immediately surrender his own service game. The Florentine managed another break to make it 5:4 (to nil even) and served for the set. However, Shapovalov, who was born in Tel Aviv and emigrated to Canada with his parents at a very young age, held on and broke back for the second time. The exciting and high-class match went into a tie-break, which Cobolli clearly won 7:2.
Set two began again with a break and a re-break, but Shapavalov made the preliminary decision with a break to make it 3:2. In the next few games, (surprisingly) no server allowed a break point, so that the 26-year-old Canadian capitalised on the first set point on his own service to make it 6:4 and thus equalise the set.
Flavio Cobolli led 4:3 in the deciding set and had three break chances in a row. However, Denis Shapovalov once again jumped from the brink of defeat. What's more, the former top 10 player (2020), who had won the ATP 500 tournament in Dallas in February, broke his Italian opponent to make it 5:4. But that wasn't enough: the 23-year-old Cobolli didn't want to bow out like that and got his service back - 5:5. It went into another tie-break. In which Cobolli looked like the sure winner: 6:3 - three match points. But Shapovalov reduced the score to 5:6 once again and Cobolli put an end to the colourful hustle and bustle after more than two and a half hours with his own service: game, set and victory for Italy's number two.
It was Denis Shapovalov's second early exit in Halle after losing to Alexander Zverev in the second round in 2023. By contrast, Flavio Cobolli's ‘German’ streak continues: after his tournament win in Hamburg, he is on a 7-0 run in Germany.
