Defending champion Alexander Zverev stayed focused and avoided a potentially dangerous matchup during his Rome opener on Wednesday night against home favourite Matteo Berrettini.
Rafa Enters Beast Mode
Zverev beat the 21-year-old Italian 7-5, 6-3 on Court Centrale for his 10th consecutive win, a streak that includes back-to-back title runs at the BMW Open by FWU in Munich and the Mutua Madrid Open, Zverev’s third ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title (d. Thiem). The 21-year-old German won his 20th consecutive set on clay and improved to 14-2 on the surface this year.
“It’s not easy to come from Madrid, where there’s a lot of altitude, it’s very fast, to here. So, I only had basically one day. And for that, I thought I played well. Still, I had some adjustments to do in the first set. But then, once I got going in the second set, I thought I played great,” Zverev said.
He will next meet top Brit Kyle Edmund, who saved the only break point he faced and beat France’s Lucas Pouille 6-2, 7-6(3) in one hour, 34 minutes. Edmund reached his maiden Masters 1000 quarter-final last week in Madrid, beating Novak Djokovic before falling to #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov.
Zverev leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head series 2-0, including a clay-court win in Nice two years ago. His second-round tilt against Berrettini had caution written on all sides of it: A powerful young Italian, playing with nothing to lose in front of passionate fans on the tournament’s biggest court. Yet Zverev went about his business rather routinely, as he’s done for the past two weeks, holding serve and breaking at opportune times.
The No. 3 player in the ATP Rankings fell behind 0/40 in the third game but won five consecutive points to hold. He broke in the 11th game and later served out the set. In the second set, Berrettini rolled his right ankle at 1-2 and looked hampered by it at times. But Zverev remained focused and served out the match to move to 8-1 in Rome.
Be the first to comment