The Italian Matteo Berrettini, fourth seed, won a tense derby on Friday against his compatriot Stefano Travaglia, finishing 7-6 (5) and 7-6 (1), and reached the quarterfinals of the 1000 Masters in Rome for the first time in his career. Berrettini, born in Rome in 1996, had only reached the fourth in a Masters 1,000 at the 2019 Shanghai tournament, when he was a semifinalist, and will be measured this Saturday with the winner of the duel between Croatian Marin Cilic and Danish Casper Ruud.
The Roman player was the winner of an even match, lasting two hours on the central court of the Foro Italico, against an opponent in good shape, who was able to eliminate American Taylor Fritz and Croatian Borna Coric on the way to the second round. After last year's outstanding season, in which he won in Stuttgart and Budapest and was a semi-finalist at the US Open, In addition to finishing in eighth place in the world ranking, Berrettini fights to reach the end in the tournament in his city.
The Roman will compete with the Norwegian Casper Ruud, who surprised the Croatian Marin Cilic (6-2 and 7-6 (6)), in the quarterfinals and could potentially face Serbian Novak Djokovic, world number 1 and four-time winner of this tournament, in a hypothetical semi-final.
The last quarter-final will be between the Canadian Denis Shapovalov, number 14 in the ranking, and the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, number 22, who came back and won this Friday against the young Italian Jannik Sinner.
Results of the day.