Matteo Berrettini: 'I'm in the semis (against Rafael Nadal). Why not?'
Matteo Berrettini returns the ball during a match against Gael Monfils at the U.S. Open on Wednesday at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing. Credit: JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA-EFE/Shutters/JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Go spelunking inside Matteo Berrettini’s head and you will get an idea how appreciative three-fourths of the U.S. Open men’s semifinalists feel about the current state of affairs.
“I am surprised. I am surprised,” said 23-year-old Russian Daniil Medvedev. He is on a scorching streak of 21 wins in his last 23 matches, including his first two tour titles, and is seeded No. 5.
“Me, too,” Dimitrov agreed.
But listen to Berrettini describe some of the thoughts, positive and otherwise, during the process of such unexpected developments.
“I was saying to myself during the match” — his five-set tiebreak quarterfinal upset of 13th seed Gael Monfils — “What do you expect for? I mean, you’re 23. Just playing your first quarterfinals and you expect that you not get tight? So I was saying to myself: OK, that’s normal.
Now he’s got Nadal. “Who on this tour doesn’t know Rafa?” Berrettini said. “I mean, I saw, like, a hundred of his matches,” including Nadal’s 2005 championship final in Rome against Argentine Guillermo Coria, when Berrettini was 9.
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