Francisco Cerundolo from Argentina is the new champion of the Croatia Open. In a thrillingly exciting match where the momentum was constantly changing, he won the decisive tiebreak in the third set against the Italian Lorenzo Musetti (7-5). Musetti spoke afterwards about a roller-coaster and that’s what it was. We often saw the Italian standing far behind the baseline. Musetti’s deep positioning is not entirely without risk for the linesmen, as can be seen from one of the photos below. The Argentinian’s serve is not overly hard and his second serve certainly not (we recorded a second serve of 116 km). So there was actually no urgent need to stand very far back. Nevertheless, Musetti played stronger in the first set than Cerundolo, who was perhaps somewhat impressed by a sold-out Goran Ivanisevic stadium and the title of an ATP tournament at stake. Musetti managed to break him twice and won that set 6-2.
Cerundolo has been playing well in Umag all week and shows that he can remain calm when things go wrong. We saw that again in the second set. The mental resilience of the world number 37 is striking. Especially given the fact that the crowd was clearly in favor of the Italian (and that is of course not surprising because Umag is very close to Italy, so there were also a lot of Italians in the stadium). Cerundolo was able to make things more difficult for Musetti in this set. By having a good spread, not only between the forehand and backhand sides, but also by varying between short and deep balls, he allowed the Italian to do an enormous amount of running work. The Argentinian’s resilience and good play paid off in the win of the second set (6-4).
The crowd cheered Musetti on once again, but no matter how much Musetti wants to win, he definitely doesn’t want any stolen points to his name. This became apparent in decisions about in or out. During a Cerundolo serve, someone in the audience made an annoying noise that clearly distracted the Argentinian. He gestured to the referee, but apparently he had not noticed anything, but Musetti had. He told the referee that Cerundolo should be given a new first serve because he was clearly being hindered. This is how it happened. If all players are so sporty and honest, you don’t really need referees.
n the third set the breaks and rebreaks followed each other, which meant that a tiebreak had to be played to decide the match. The first mini break was for Musetti, but the win went to Cerundolo (7-5). While photographing, it was already noticeable that Cerundolo realized when making the last point that this would be the winning point. The concentrated grim look on his face turned into a smile and later into a wide smile. The joy of the Argentinian and his ‘box’ was enormous. At the award ceremony it became clear that the audience also appreciated Cerundolo’s playing and attitude, as he received thunderous applause. Rightly so. If you defeats Lorenzo Sonego, Andrey Rublev and Lorenzo Musetti in one week, you are a great champion. Hats off to this fine player!
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