Facing the final stretch of the Davis Cup, Argentina had an unbeatable start in the quarterfinal series against Italy after the victory of Francisco Cerúndolo over Lorenzo Musetti 6-4 and 6-2 at the José María Marín Cárpena in Málaga.
The story did not begin as it ended for the Buenos Aires-born player taking into account that the first two games went to the Italian who managed to break Cerúndolo’s first serve in the match.
However, the Argentine, ranked 30th in the ATP ranking, did not get carried away by his rival’s overwhelming start to the match and recovered by breaking his serve in the third game to close the gap on the scoreboard.
From the fourth game the match was balanced with Cerúndolo managing to equalize the score and there the victories were shared in each set until the seventh game when the Argentine managed to break once again.
In any case, Francisco did not take advantage of that clean and jerk by breaking his serve and when it was time to have the serve in his favor, the Italian prevailed and tied the match, thus suggesting that the first game led to the tiebreak.
This outcome did not occur, because the Argentine redoubled the bet and took the last two games to crown an entertaining first set that was 6-4 in his favor.
Then, unlike the first set, the second was defined quickly. Cerúndolo stepped on the accelerator, taking the first two games, breaking Musetti in the first and only giving up the third game to seal his 6-1 victory.
With this victory for Cerúndolo, the Argentine team began the series with Italy in a great way, which has in its second crossing Sebastián Báez facing Jannik Sinner and the Argentine duo of Máximo González and Andrés Molteni against the Italian tandem made up of Bolelli and Vavassori closing the day.
JP
