Sports Desk
LONDON: Seventh seed Matteo Berrettini stayed solid in the face of a spirited fightback from Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz to become the first Italian to reach the Wimbledon final on Friday with a 6-3 6-0 6-7(3) 6-4 victory.
The 25-year-old took two hours and 36 minutes to get past the 14th seeded Hurkacz on Centre Court to reach the championship match on Sunday – the same day Italy play in the Euro 2020 soccer final a few miles up the road at Wembley Stadium against England. Waiting for Berrettini on the opposite side of the net will be either world number one Novak Djokovic, a five-time Wimbledon winner, or Canadian 10th seed Denis Shapovalov.
“I have no words,” Berrettini said in his on-court interview. “I need, I think, couple of hours to understand what happened. I just know that I played a great match. I’m really happy. I’m really glad to be here.
“I think I never dreamed about this because it was too much for a dream.”
Berrettini’s success in the past fortnight has not been entirely out of the blue as he arrived at the All England Club after winning his fifth tour-level title at Queen’s.
He was the first player to win the Wimbledon warm-up event on his debut appearance since Boris Becker in 1985 and remains on course to match the German’s feat of completing the Queen’s Club-Wimbledon double in the same year. Friday’s victory also made Berrettini the first Italian man to reach a Grand Slam final since Adriano Panatta won the Roland Garros title in 1976.
It was billed as a tight contest between the first-time Wimbledon semi-finalists, who were evenly matched in their ability to serve big and came into the match with a 1-1 head-to-head record.
While Berrettini defeated Hurkacz in straight sets in the Australian Open qualifying draw in 2018, the Pole had returned the favour when they met the following year in Miami.
