Matteo Berrettini’s rise to the upper echelon of tennis seemed to happen in a flash, as fast as his trademark forehand. In 2019—in just his second main-draw appearance at the US Open—Berrettini blasted his way through the competition, scoring big victories over 2017 quarterfinalist Andrey Rublev and 2016 semifinalist Gael Monfils to reach the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. In doing so, he became just the second Italian US Open men’s semifinalist in history and the first since Corrado Barazzutti achieved the result in 1977 (a year when the event was played on clay). It was an emphatic announcement that Berrettini, who a mere two years earlier had been ranked outside the Top 100, could compete at the highest levels and on the biggest stages of the sport.
Two years later, Berrettini, the current world No. 8, has proved he’s no flash in the pan. He’s still standing on those big stages. And he’s only getting better.
“I feel I belong in the [Alexander] Zverev, [Daniil] Medvedev, [Dominic] Thiem and [Stefanos] Tsitsipas group,” he recently told the Italian press. “Both in terms of ranking, and also when we play against each other, and I think they know it.”
“I feel I belong in the Zverev, Medvedev, Thiem and Tsitsipas group. Both in terms of ranking, and also when we play against each other, and I think they know it.”
His results make a strong case. In 2021, the 25-year-old has captured two titles—on two different surfaces—and reached his first-ever Masters 1000 final in Madrid. He’s also made the second week of every Grand Slam for the first time in his career. And this past July, he notched perhaps his biggest professional achievement to date when he became the first Italian man ever to reach the Wimbledon final, where he claimed the first set in a tense tiebreak before eventually falling in four to world No. 1 Novak Djokovic.
Even with all those accomplishments, he might have enjoyed an even stronger season, were it not for injuries. He was forced to withdraw from his Round of 16 match against Tsitsipas at the Australian Open with an abdominal strain, and this summer he opted to pull out of the Olympics and the Masters 1000 event in Toronto with a thigh issue. He only returned to the tour just before the US Open at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, where he rallied from a set down to defeat Albert Ramos-Vinolas in his first match back. After the close contest, Berrettini told reporters he was still in the process of shaking off the rust.
“My strokes from the baseline weren’t working the way I wanted them to,” he said. “But I knew from the beginning it’s been a long time since I played a match, especially on hard, so I expected to feel a little bit weird.”
Still rediscovering his game, Berrettini has had to scrap for wins at Flushing Meadows. The No. 6 seed played two tiebreaks in his opener against Jeremy Chardy, then needed five sets and nearly four hours in the third round to overcome an in-form Ilya Ivashka, who was riding an eight-match win streak. But if he can’t make quick work of his opponents—as he did in the early stages of his 2020 US Open campaign, when he didn’t drop serve or a set through the first few rounds—he’s satisfied he has been able to find a way to fight.
“[Ilya] won in Winston-Salem, and was also playing the American swing really well,” Berrettini noted after his victory over Ivashka. “I knew it would be really tough. I think I had to step up my game in order to win the match, and I did it in the fifth set. I'm really happy, because mentally and physically it wasn't easy. I didn't have so many hours in my legs and in my body, [but] I did it, and I'm really happy that I was able to do it.”
Berrettini goes into his next round as a big favorite against qualifier and world No. 144 Oscar Otte. Although a huge gulf exists between the pair in the rankings, and Berrettini leads their head-to-head 1-0, Otte has a reputation for flustering higher-ranked opponents at majors. The German took compatriot Zverev to five sets at the French Open, then repeated the feat against three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray at Wimbledon a month later. Should Berrettini get through, he could become the next obstacle in Djokovic’s quest for the Grand Slam. Berrettini has never beaten the world No. 1—but he’s also not exactly a comfortable matchup for the Serb, either. In their French Open quarterfinal earlier this year, Djokovic was so elated to get through the 6-3, 6-2, 6-7, 7-5 contest that he screamed and roared at the empty stands upon its conclusion.
For Berrettini, another history-defining match with the 20-time Grand Slam champion would be exactly the kind of moment he’s dreamed about his whole life. That’s the thing about Berrettini’s rise. It looked like it happened in a flash, but it didn’t. He’s been working hard to attain these sky-high results for a very long time.
“Sometimes I remember when I was a kid and I was doing serves into baskets, serving a lot,” he said. “I remember I was serving from the deuce side. I was imagining serving 4-all, 30-all. That's [what] I was imagining. Sometimes when you're serving and you [just] have a basket, and you don't have a guy on the other side of the net, it's tough. You just serve. I wanted to be focused when I was younger, because I knew that moment would come eventually.”
