Lorenzo Musetti, admission about Florence: “It’s anxiety, I can’t control it.”

A painful defeat, also due to an enemy as silent as it is treacherous: anxiety.

Lorenzo Musetti was eliminated by Felix Auger-Aliassime at the UniCredit Firenze Open, missing out on access to the final of the Tuscan tournament. The 20-year-old from Carrara, however, admitted without mincing words that what affected his performance was that feeling of malaise that even led him to decide to lie supine inside the Palazzo Wanny.

“I had to deal with some kind of anxiety attack,” Musetti explained, as can be read on the ‘Corriere della Sera’ website. “It is something that, when I am under pressure, I cannot control. However, out of respect for the public, I decided not to withdraw.”

Symptoms, as the Milanese newspaper explained, were closing of the diaphragm, little air in the lungs, a feeling of nausea without having a stomach ache. “When I was a junior I used to get it a lot,” Musetti confessed, “but it hasn’t happened since last year when I faced Baez in Milan. Unfortunately, when I get it, it only goes away after a while. Now I just want to go to Naples, taking the positive feelings of this week with me.”