Lorenzo Musetti does not fear Jannik Sinner
The words of Lorenzo Musetti
Lorenzo Musetti gave a long interview to La Stampa: “I would never change my tennis. Maybe on the court I need more time than others, but I think it’s more rewarding to stay true to ourselves. And to the dreams we have in our drawer. The most important one was to become a professional, I succeeded. But closed one drawer, in sports as in life, other drawers open. Now it is to reach the top of the ranking, to win a Slam. If in the end I fail to achieve all the goals I set for myself, it will mean that they were out of my reach. But I wouldn’t want to be different from who I am. I would have loved to be able to play against Federer, now it is no longer possible.”
Chapter Carlos Alcaraz: “In one year he has made incredible progress in terms of tennis, but also physically and and in terms of awareness of his own means. Today he is the benchmark, the player to beat. He is the King Midas of tennis: what he touches becomes gold. He is both a friend and a source of inspiration, having beaten him is a boast but also an extra motivation to succeed again.”
“More difficult to control Sinner’s backhand or emotions? Emotions. They are a tougher opponent than any shot. Also because in today’s tennis there are no big technical and tactical gaps, you can see it even from the many players close to the top 100 who manage to abate a top 10 or even a top 5. We are moving more and more toward a flattening of values. The difference, at a certain level, is on the emotional level and on the mental level. And there the best have a leg up. Tennis is a sport that can take you to the top quickly but sometimes it hurts you so much that you almost come to reject it. In the last couple of weeks so much stress built up, I had to defend the victory in Hamburg and subconsciously I felt it. I felt like being on the court, but some nervousness came back. However, it didn’t go horribly (semifinals in Bastad, quarters in Hamburg, ed.), and besides a few points I feel I brought home some extra experience.”
Chiosa on the words of Ivanisevic, who said claims that only Djokovic and Sinner can beat Alcaraz in a Slam: “I disagree. There are several players who can bother him. And there are others who are blossoming and whose true value we haven’t seen yet.”