Musetti, the dream continues: beats De Minaur and will take on Alcaraz in the final

Some matches are not won by forehand and backhand alone. You need mental toughness, patience and the rare ability to stay in the match, in the pain of an up and down of emotions that vacillate between joy and discouragement passing between the hope of making it and the fear of failure. Lorenzo Musetti found them all, one after another, in his semifinal match against Alex De Minaur at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. And in the end, after two hours and thirty-eight minutes of a battle as dense as the wet earth of the Central, he signed off on the feat: 1-6 6-4 7-6(4), punching his ticket to his first final in a Masters 1000.

And to say that the start had been nightmarish, as has become customary in the Principality this year: in fact, Musetti has lost the first set 4 times out of 5 (the only time it didn’t happen was with Berrettini), 3 of them by 6-1, including today’s match. De Minaur, in the demonic pixie version, entered the court with fire in his legs and the lucidity of a player now accustomed to breathing the high altitude air. Immediate break, constant pressure, and Musetti unable to find depth and rhythm. The score ran away: 3-0, then 5-1. It was raining, in the sky and in the blue’s game, forced to chase and row without ever finding a favorable wave. The set ended 6-1, with the bitter feeling of a day born crooked.

Then, something changed in Musetti’s head once again. The look toward his corner, where there is Simone Tartarini and his family to give him confidence and courage, along with a public always warm and supportive of Musetti. Lorenzo begins to find the court again, has slowed where he used to hurry, has built instead of rushed. Break in the opening, and even when De Minaur tried to put his nose back ahead by winning the break in turn, the Azure remained steadfast by taking back what was his, supported by a backhand that – as the minutes passed – became canvas and chisel again. The key moment? The eighth game of the second set: Musetti draws a textbook lob, then breaks serve and closes 6-4 amidst a thousand pitfalls.

The third set was the most muscular, not in the strokes but in the head. Breaks, counterbreaks, errors, redemptions. Musetti goes ahead, then shuts down at the best when he goes to serve for the match at 5-4. De Minaur recovers him, overtakes him, but here the Carrara native shows what seemed lost in recent months: the ability to hold on, to put it back together, to believe. When he serves to stay in the match down 5-6, he pulls out an ace at 215 mph and a forehand winner: it’s tie-break. In the deciding game, courage makes all the difference. At 4-4 it is Lorenzo who pushes on, taking the point, finding the minibreak. Two match points come: on the second, the Central explodes. It’s the final with Alcaraz.

Carlo Galati