Musetti is seeded second in Umag and reached indeed the finals beating the Czech Jacub Mensik in the semi-finals. The Czech kept up well in the first set and Musetti was visibly relieved that he managed to break Mensik at 4-4, but in the second set Mensik could no longer keep up with the Italian. He won only one game, giving Lorenzo Musetti the win 6-4, 6-1. This was to the great satisfaction of the audience, among which there are many Italians as always in Umag.
In the final he will not meet the first seeded Andrey Rublev, but the Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo, who is playing a remarkably good tournament. Cerundolo is number 37 on the ATP rankings and Rublev is number 9 (his highest ranking was number 5 in the world). Still, Cerundolo managed to win. In the first set a tiebreak had to be played, which was accompanied by many breaks and rebreaks, but was ultimately won by the Argentinian 8-6. Rublev game is somewhat one-dimensional and mainly based on very hard hits. He regularly walks around his backhand to position the forhand cannon. But that does not mean that he has a backhand of a softy, because the balls from that side also come through very hard. If those hard blows are effective, there is almost no defense, but if the precision is not quite right, Rublev doesn’t really seem to have a plan B, but rather to hit even harder. This does not always produce the desired result. That’s what we saw in the second set in which he fell behind by a break, although he seemed to recover at 4-5. He got several break points, but was unable to capitalize on them. After five deuces, it was the Argentinian who ultimately prevailed and secured a place in the final (6-4).
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