ATP Chengdu, Lorenzo Musetti emerges from the distance and earns a chance at a rematch

It was not an easy debut for Lorenzo Musetti in the Chengdu ATP tournament: the Carrara-based tennis player, number 1 seed and as such admitted directly to the round of 16, had no small difficulty against Croatian Dino Prizmic, currently number 121 in the ranking and never in the top 100 in his career.

7-5, 3-6, 6-2 the final score of a match that lasted more than two hours and a quarter of play.

Musetti understood from the first set that he would have to raise the level of his tennis to avoid bitter surprises, not by chance Prizmic brought him up to 5-5 before surrendering two games in a row and, at the same time, the first game fraction.

The second set was also balanced, at least until 3-3. From there, a few too many errors on the part of the Azure, who suffered a three-game losing streak and was thus forced to play the quarterfinal qualification in the third set. Musetti’s greater experience, combined with the Croatian’s waning form, however, did the trick in the decisive fraction, which closed 6-2 after forty minutes.

Musetti already knows the name of the opponent he will face in the quarterfinals: it is Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili, who defeated lucky loser Billy Harris in the first round and American Mackenzie McDonald in the round of 16. For the Carrara native, it is a chance for a rematch against the number 114 ranked player who ousted him in the first round at Wimbledon, beginning a rather negative period for Musetti himself.