Tennis
After saving five match points, the Murcian ends up losing to Musetti in the first final of his career
Carlos Alcaraz loses the Hamburg final against the young Italian Lorenzo Musetti. They are both very good. The future of tennis is yours and Jannik Sinner’s. But Carlos Alcaraz, at 19, has one thing that Lorenzo Musetti, 20, does not yet have. The Murcian, pure class and determination, has an iron mentality that the transalpine lacks. For this reason, he greatly stretched a game that the Italian should have won on the fast track, since he was superior in the first two sets. He rowed and rowed Carlitos to die on the shore. He did the hardest thing and got tangled up when everything was coming his way.
Thus, the Hamburg title escaped the young tennis player from El Palmar in a somewhat strange way, who in this way sees his immaculate streak in finals stopped (he had won the five he had played until this Sunday) and ends his unbeaten this year in matches on clay in ATP 500 category tournaments. In addition, he has not yet reached fourth place in the world ranking, but he does rise to fifth, his ceiling until now.
Musetti won an indecipherable final, with moments of pure spectacle and others difficult to qualify (6-4, 6-7 and 6-4). He had the Alcaraz lost duel in the second set. He raised up to five match points against an opponent who showed throughout the afternoon that he can play one-on-one with the Murcian and that at his best level on clay he is an almost perfect tennis player, like Carlitos. What happens is that Musetti crumpled when he had to close the match. He saw himself lifting the first title of his life and his legs trembled. Quite the opposite of Alcaraz, who once again took out the jar of essences at a critical moment. The worse things look, the better he plays. He is a chosen one. A diamond that is not yet polished.
Musetti had been better in a first round in which he gave Alcaraz no options with his serve. He took the player born in Carrara out of the movies and knew how to punish the excesses of confidence of the Murcian. Suicidal drops and shots to the net when they weren’t playing were mixed with sky-high rights from an Alcaraz who didn’t know how to get a hold of Musetti until the end of the second set.
When he had it all lost, Alcaraz pulled head and claw to stay afloat on the Hamburg clay. He saved two match points at 5-4 down on serve from the Italian. In that tenth game of the second sleeve there was a scandalous error of the referee judge. The Italian served to win and at 0-15 a drop shot by the Murcian was returned by Musetti after bouncing the ball twice. The referee did not see it and Musseti, instead of returning the point to Alcaraz on the next serve, played crazy. He protested and protested Alcaraz, but they did not give him the point.
Despite this, the Murcian did not lose concentration, he continued throwing huge dropshots and forced the tiebreaker with great effort. He started it wonderfully (3-1 up with three points), but he stopped too much, made several unforced errors and put the tie-break on a plate for the Italian. 6-3 and two services had Musetti to close his victory. He didn’t know. He then took out Alcaraz and saved the fifth ‘match point’. He hit cruising speed and took the set.
Musetti is remade
The blow of having the title in his hands and not securing it did not affect Musetti, who recovered his best version in a close third set. Alcaraz, in some moments too daring, barely hurt his rival to the rest, but he kept it out of him with some comfort. Until in the tenth game, with 5-4 for Musetti and 30-15 in favor of Alcaraz, the Italian pulled off an impressive crosscourt backhand to pass the Murcian in a climb to the net that he did not touch. He rushed the pupil of Juan Carlos Ferrero, very fast when he had to be calm, and made two mistakes that cost him a title that he could perfectly have achieved.
#epic #save #Carlos #Alcaraz #Hamburg