Internazionali d’Italia, Francesco Passaro joins the big boys

Francesco Passaro è the thirteenth Italian in the men’s main draw

The qualifiers of the Internazionali d'Italia have promoted one last athlete from the Bel Paese, who will goà to join the main draw to the big names of the tournament and the twelve Italians already present, either by right or thanks to a wild card: he is Francesco Passaro, class of 2001 and number 240 in the ATP ranking, who beat after a three-hour marathon the Croatian Duje Ajdukovic in the final round of the preliminaries.

Passaro won 7-6(5), 6-7(6), 7-6(3), managing to contain both Ajdukovic’s resounding comeback in the third set (from 5-0 to 5-5) and come out mentally better from the rain interruption in the last tie-break, closing it with a 5-point-to-one partial, to go on to take his place among the "greats" of the Capital tournament.

Passaro thus victoriously closes the qualifiers after beating ATP number 89, American Aleksandar Kovacevic, and Croatian Ajdukovic, who occupies box 129 in the world rankings. The Perugia-born athlete thus goes to complete the tricolor troop that, in the men’s draw, è consists of Lorenzo Musetti, Matteo Arnaldi, Lorenzo Sonego, Flavio Cobolli, Luciano Darderi, Luca Nardi, Matteo Berrettini, Stefano Napolitano, Fabio Fognini, Andrea Vavassori, Matteo Gigante and Giulio Zeppieri.

In his career, Passaro has won four tournaments, one Challenger (Trieste 2022) and three on the ITF World Tennis Tour circuit (Cairo and Xativa 2021, Monastir 2022). His best ranking was on February 13, 2023, when he managedì to rise to position number 108.