Wimbledon: Flavio Cobolli Keeps Rolling; Alex de Minaur Has No Chance

Flavio Cobolli will play in the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the second time in his career. The Roman tennis player, after the emotional roller coaster of his match against Karen Khachanov, defeated world No. 6 Alex de Minaur in three sets, 7-5, 7-6(4), 6-3, in two hours and thirty-five minutes of play.

After a very evenly matched first set—effectively decided by a break in Cobolli’s favor in the eleventh game—the second set seemed to slip away when De Minaur took a 5-2 lead, but the Italian fought back fiercely with a 4-1 run that sent the two contenders to a tiebreak: the tiebreak went decisively Cobolli’s way, as he allowed his opponent just three points.

The third set also began with a few too many difficulties for “Cobbo,” who immediately lost a game on his own serve, but his reaction was more immediate, and from a 3-2 deficit, he went on another 4-1 run that sealed the victory. Twelve months later, then, Cobolli returns to where he had already reached at Wimbledon: good news for his ranking as well, since even if he were to lose his next match, the Roman wouldn’t lose any ranking points.

Born in 2002 in Florence but raised in Rome, Flavio Cobolli is currently the second-ranked Italian male tennis player, behind Jannik Sinner. After the Roland Garros final, where he lost in five sets to Alexander Zverev but still earned the applause of the Parisian crowd, he broke into the Top 10, and his performances at Wimbledon show that Cobolli is there to stay for as long as possible.