Lorenzo Sonego beats Richard Gasquet in Madrid and now challenges Jannik Sinner
In Madrid Lorenzo Sonego beats Richard Gasquet and now challenges Jannik Sinner
Good news continues to come out of the Madrid Masters 1000 for Italian men’s tennis: three have made it past the first round. Lorenzo Sonego, world number 52, beat long-time veteran Richard Gasquet, number 52, 6-2 7-5; Flavio Cobolli, won against ranked Chilean Alejandro Tabilo 5-7 6-4 6-4; and finally, Matteo Arnaldi, number 36, got the better of Australian Christopher O’Connell 6-4 6-1.
The match that interested fans the most was obviously the one between Soego and Gasquet, also because the winner will face world number 2 Jannik Sinner in the second round. Well, Sonego had an easy time in the first set going ubito on 4-0 and maintaining the double break lead until the end, while in the second set he had to save three break points in the second game before operating the decisive stretch on 5-5 and closing the match after just over an hour and 20 minutes of play.
In just over two hours, however, Coboli remounted and defeated Tabilo, who had already served for the set at 5-3 after going up 4-1. È a break was enough for Cobolli at 4-4 in the second set to extend the match to the third, in which Tabilo è went 2-0 and then 3-1 but got caught up again losing the decisive service game at 4-4. Without history the match of Arnaldi, who in an hour and a quarter never lost the serve snatching it three times from his opponent to whom he conceded only one break ball, moreover annulled.
In the second turo Sonego, as mentioned, will face Sinner, with whom he has lost four times out of four winning only one set, in an all-Blue derby, but it will be the first time the two will face each other on clay. Cobolli, on the other hand, will face another Chilean, Nicolas Jarry, the No. 22 seed, whom he beat in his only previous match two years ago in Gstaad, while Arnaldi will try to bother world No. 4 and the tournament’s No. 3 seed, Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, with whom he has lost twice without ever winning a set.
