Fabio Fognini also had to say goodbye to the ATP World Tour 500 tournament on Tuesday: The Italian lost against his compatriot Marco Cecchinato in three sets.
Number 17 it is. That would be enough in the World Cup year 2018 to be allowed to actively participate in the football season in Russia, especially since the numbers in the individual teams are only assigned from 1 to 23. Two small problems, however: Fabio Fognini is attached to the tennis player’s profession. And he’s Italian. It doesn’t matter.
Fognini came to the Center Court of MTTC Iphitos later Tuesday evening with number 17, the court on which Gael Monfils did nothing good for his already modest Munich balance sheet. This balance is now 1:4.
Fabio Fogini has already tore a lot more in Munich, reached the final in 2014, where Martin Klizan robbed his last nerve with a very long treatment break. Sometimes it doesn’t even need any external influences for the latter, Fabio likes to be self-sufficient.
As Philipp Kohlschreiber once put it so beautifully in Kitzbühel: you never know which Fabio you will get. The good one or the bad one.
With Marco Cecchinato, Fognini had certainly found an opponent who had come to Munich inspired by his first ATP tournament victory in Budapest. Righteously exhausted in theory, however, Cecchinato had taken the path of qualifying, lost there and then picked up his championship as Lucky Loser.
Until 3-0 in the first set, Cecchinato carried the euphoria, then tiredness set in. Fognini took the lead with a break, took a warning for the re-break as well as an obscene choice of words, took the first set 7-5. If it weren’t Fognini.
After Monfils and Dustin Brown (task against Maximilian Marterer), a third tennis bon vivant bid farewell to the Munich tournament. The 17 remained unexplained of course, Fognini rarely sees a need to speak. But it would speak for Fabio, the family man, if the background of the number was the year of his son’s birth.