Flavio Cobolli comes close: Holger Rune goes through at tie-break

The great feat è only touched.

Flavio Cobolli ceded to Holger Rune the passage to the third round of Roland Garros, after five sets and almost four hours of battle ended in the cruelest possible way. In fact, the Florentine tennis player recovered two sets from the feared Dane, number 13 on the ATP circuit. Then in the fifth he got as far as the tie-break, where però he had to surrender: 6-4, 6-3, 3-6, 3-6, 7-6(7) the final score.

The first set is actually decided in the opening game, in which Rune snatches the break from Cobolli and then easily controls operations in all subsequent service rounds. He tries to do the same in the second, when the Azure nullifies two break points in the third game but his opponent wins four in a row between the sixth and ninth. And for the Dane, the Parisian evening seems to be going downhill.

Nothing could have been more wrong: finding himself immediately up 0-1 at the beginning of the third set, Cobolli took three games in a row, resisted Rune’s recovery attempt and completed the feat by nullifying no less than five break points at 5-3 and then snatching him from his opponent’s service in the next game. Almost easier was the fourth set, in which he imitated the Dane’s work in the second and went from 2-3 to 6-3 with the wind now seemingly in his sails.

It was then all decided in the fifth set, which was throbbing and (unlike the others) developed without further breaks. Cobolli saved himself at 3-3 and 4-4 by annulling two break points to Rune, but the Dane made up for it with interest by taking the 5-4 by neutralizing three in one game. Bitterly the tie-break, with the Florentine dreaming at 5-0 and then 6-2. The moreù experienced opponent centers però the comeback and closes on a 10-7 that leaves a mountain of regrets.