“I was not sure I could finish the match,” he said in the interview on the court at the microphone of Tennis TV. “I felt something in the coast at the end of my warm -up, just before entering the field. I felt pain on almost every strike, and especially in service. Fortunately, I was able to call the physiotherapist, but there is not much that we can do in three minutes. »»
“I took painkillers, which is never ideal, but in a situation like this you don’t have too much choice,” he added. “I was able to continue playing, taking the games one after the other. It improved over the meeting. It’s worrying to start a game like that, but I managed to manage it. (…) Now we will have to look at that (the injury). »»
Breaké in the wake of the intervention of the healer, the native of D’Oslo seemed left for a complicated afternoon, without being able to really defend his chances. That Nenni. He rocked the next game. Then he took over by grabbing the 21st of the planetary hierarchy to complete the first round.
While the grip has argued, on a heavy land, slowed down due to humidity, it rained breaks in the second set. Two in favor of Cerúndolo, one more for Ruud who had to be solid so as not to give up his commitment more. He had to face five break opportunities against him in the initial act, and, above all, thirteen in the next one. To rule out fifteen in total. Of which seven during a game as long as a sentence by François Bayrou, at 6-4, 2-2.
During this one, the 26-year-old also had to resist the pressure of an audience pushing for the last Hispanophone still in the running. Before the seventh, he complained, with the referee, of certain disruptors shouting between his two services. Not enough to confuse it: he slammed a first winner, then won the next two points to save his skin.
-On a surface, making its style less than when it is dry and hot, Ruud was jostled from the bottom. His less “spurting” lift, he had more difficulty backing up an opponent of less scratched strikes – especially in reverse – and capable of changing the directions by taking the ball early. What to push the triple winner in a great slam to put even more intensity and do not hesitate to come to the net.
At 6-4, 4-4-After an exchange of break at 6-4, 3-3 and 6-4, 3-4-he succeeded in a volley of spa-lining reverse to pass the scoring to 30-30, then one in a forehand to spread a break ball. At 6-4, 5-5, he found himself at the foot of an even larger wall: 0-40. But he found the appropriate scale to get out of it, benefiting from a fault, slamming an ACE, and seeing the Argentinian, as a good attack of attack, “wood” his forehand. The failure too much.
A few minutes later, Ruud finished the work on his third break in the match in five opportunity. A deliverance experienced on a last off -center strike from his rival of the day, which was striving to block it in the Diagonal Revers, to reach its third Masters 1000 final.
After those lost in Miami in 2022-where he had already defeated the elder of the dengins Cerundolo in the semi-finals-and Monte-Carlo last year, Casper Ruud will face Lorenzo Musetti or Jack Draper. With the certainty, whatever the result, to return to the top 10 which he released on April 21, before the start of hostility in Madrid.
More information to come …
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