Arnaldi beats Tiafoe after more than five hours and joins Berrettini and Cobolli in the quarterfinals. The Italy of tennis is a movement, not a single man
The Italy of tennis, in case there was still need to prove it, is not Jannik Sinner. Or rather: it’s not just him, who still remains the icing on the cake of a set of talents that other nations envy us. Sinner was eliminated from Roland Garros – not for technical reasons, but due to an illness that stopped him just when he was two points away from victory against Cerundolo -, but the castle did not collapse. Because underneath there wasn’t just one column, but several extremely solid foundation.
Matteo Arnaldi beat the American Frances Tiafoe in five sets – 7-6, 6-7, 3-6, 7-6, 6-4 – after five and a half hours of play. One of those matches in which, at a certain point, the tennis (which in any case was of excellent quality) ends, and something else begins: a physical and mental battle in which the one who is more determined, the one with more motivation than the opponent, wins. Arnaldi himself admitted it, with disarming simplicity: «I was just playing with everything I had. There had to be a winner and luckily it was me». It is difficult to better describe what happened on the pitch on the Parisian evening of Saturday 1 June.
The turning point for Arnaldi
In the fourth set, Tiafoe had gone up 4-1 with a double break. It seemed over, Matteo’s strength apparently was failing. And instead, the blue won nine of the next thirteen games, plus a tie-break. In the fifth set, at 4-4, he even broke the American’s serve. After wasting the first match point with a double fault – a human detail, after all – he closed on the third opportunity. “I don’t know how I can stand here,” he finally said, exhausted.
Three Italians in the quarterfinals: a historic fact
With this extraordinary victory, Arnaldi joins Flavio Cobolli and Matteo Berrettini in the next round. For the first time in the history of tennis, three Italians are in the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam tournament in the same year – and moreover in the tournament in which the Italian number one Jannik Sinner was stopped by a physical problem. In the quarterfinals, Arnaldi will meet his compatriot Berrettini, in a very particular derby that will see at least one Italian in the semifinals at Roland Garros. Cobolli, however, will challenge the number four seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, an opponent who is anything but simple on paper.
The excellence of Italian tennis
A sporting movement is measured by its depth, not by its cutting edge. Sinner is the champion – and we hope he comes back stronger than ever – but Italian tennis works because under him there are guys capable of holding out for five and a half hours in Paris, of coming back from 1-4 in the fourth set, of not giving in when the body asks to stop. This is not built in a single season. AND the result of years of silent work, on training fields and in tennis schoolswhen Italy’s racket was floundering and an Italian player entering the top 20 was considered almost a sporting miracle.
