There is not a pin on the Center Court and we are on Monday, still far from the decisive tennis commitments of the weekend, and this is a round of 16 match.
What happens is that Carlos Alcaraz (20) plays.
Thousands of Londoners have left the carriage at the Southfields stop to immerse themselves in a walk that runs between beautiful terraced houses, heading for the green meadows of Wimbledon, how envious some of us feel now that our meadows are turning yellow, who knows if there will be no turning back in the desertification of the Mediterranean.
Apart from Londoners, hundreds of Italians also immerse themselves in the British countryside. Wimbledon does not remember such a display of transalpine journalists, there are dozens of them, people from Gazzetta dello Sport or La Repubblica, and also minor digital media. Rarely has the Italian academy been seen like this, so inspired, overcrowded with talented tennis players, with enormous potential, as in the case of Jannik Sinner or Matteo Berrettini.
Between games, the Italian press converses in the press box, a nice corner in the stands with green desks, comfortable and with diagonal views. The Italians talk to each other and they don’t believe it, because at 43 minutes their boy, Berrettini, has won the first set and Alcaraz seems half-hearted.
Just as he had suffered on Saturday against Nicolás Jarry, now the world number 1 suffers against Berrettini (27), today the 38th racket in the world, actually a hoax because his position in the ranking does not respond to his performance but to his recurring injuries, some of them very recent.
Berrettini had had his great moment two years ago, in the year of his explosion at Wimbledon: after knocking down a couple of good players like Felix Auger-Aliassime or Hubert Hurkacz, the Italian had reached the final of the tennis temple for only surrender to Novak Djokovic.
And then?
Then, Berrettini had been a quarterfinalist at the US Open, again a victim of the Serbian, and, the following year, a semifinalist at the Australian Open, now defeated by Nadal, and then he had plunged into a string of setbacks, first Covid and surgery on his right hand and an abdominal tear this past winter, a succession of misfortunes that had weighed him down in 2023.
So, when he arrived at Wimbledon, he had done it quietly, an outsider.
These days in London, the world of tennis has talked a lot about Alcaraz but not so much about Berrettini, and in silence it is how the Italian had been advancing, always knocking down notable rivals, Sonego first, then De Miñaur, in the third round Zverev, and suddenly he had emerged on the Center Court in all his splendor, with the stage packed to the brim and Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach, impassive in the box, his cap pulled down, his hand on his mouth, fine as in the times when he displayed his best tennis.
Alcaraz takes those initial 43 minutes to take the measure of the big man that is Berrettini, as big as Jarry, with his 1.96 m height, and then he displays his game.
Alcaraz adapts to the game, moves the giant like the boy shakes the tree so that the fruit falls. The droplets return, the changes of rhythm.
And in the end the Italian falters, gives way in the second set and falters in the third: Alcaraz barely fails, impeccable in the rest against a prototype designed for tennis on grass, this Berrettini is a magnificent server, a serve-volley tennis player but not long-winded, just the challenge proposed by the Murcian.
It is nine at night in London, and it is cool and the light is scarce and they have closed the retractable roof because it is raining, when Berrettini says enough, trapped by the Alcaraz tennis gale.
At this point in the day, the Italian press is already thinking about Sinner, his other man in London (today he is facing Safiullin), and Alcaraz is thinking about Rune, his next stone on the road, a different profile, nothing to do with Jarry nor with Berrettini.
