Italy dreams again of seeing a tennis player in the world elite during this week at the Masters 1,000 in Rome. Tennis players from the transalpine country have returned to the competition wanting to demonstrate at the Foro Italico in Rome (this time without their audience in the stands) that they can do great things in the next tournaments.
Two young Italian tennis players fan the illusion of the rebirth of Italian tennis. The first of them is Jannik Sinner, who at 19 has already established himself in the Top-100 of the ranking (he won the NextGen ATP Finals last year) and now wants to follow in his footsteps another Italian promise: the talented Lorenzo Musetti.
At 18, Musetti, number 269 in the ATP ranking and playing his first 1,000 Masters in Rome after passing the previous phase, is demonstrating the level that he already displayed on the ITF Futures circuit in 2019, when he managed to become champion in the two tournaments held in Antalya.
In this 2020 season the young Italian was on the verge of playing the Australian Open (he fell in the last previous round against the Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor) although he did manage to enter the final table of the Dubai tournament, where he fell in the first round against Rublev. After returning from the competition, Musetti managed to reach the semifinals of the ATP Challenger in Trieste, where he lost to Spanish Carlos Alcaraz after three sets.
After falling in the Cordenons Challenger, Musetti was planted in the preliminary phase of the 1000 Masters in Rome, where he beat the Spanish Bernabé Zapata in three sets (7-6 (2), 0-6 and 6-1), the Argentine Leo Mayer (7-6 (4) and 6-3) and in the decisive match his compatriot Giulio Zeppieri (6-1, 5-7 and 6-3) to achieve a place in the final table.
Musetti had a hard bone in the first round, the Swiss Stan Wawrinka, although the Italian managed to defeat him 6-0, 7-6 (2). In the second round he ran into another great clay court specialist like Kei Nishikori and, as he did with Wawrinka, he also beat him in two sets 6-3 and 6-4.
This Thursday Musetti faces another of the revelations of the tournament, the German Dominik Koepfer, in search of a place in the quarterfinals, where Novak Djokovic could wait for him if the Serbian beat his compatriot Filip Krajinovic. Musetti wants to show on the clay of the Foro Italico the rebirth of Italian tennis.