ATP: Gstaad: Underdog Matteo Berrettini wins final against “RBA

Matteo Berrettini won the 250cc sand court tournament in Gstaad and celebrated his first title on the ATP tour. The world ranking-84th from Italy defeated the second seeded Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut 7:6 (11:9), 6:4 and scored 17 aces in the final of the Swiss Open. Berrettini never gave up his serve in the five games until his triumph.

After 1:45 hours the unseeded Berrettini converted his first match point and won 89,435 Euros and 250 world ranking points for his premiere title on the ATP tour. Bautista Agut, Stuttgart Champion of 2014, however, missed his third tournament victory in 2018, after having already triumphed in Auckland and Dubai this season.

Bautista Agut had already been warned before the final: power player “Mat” Berrettini (22) had eliminated former Gstaad winner Feliciano Lopez (Spain/No. 8) as well as fourth seeded Andrey Rublev (Russia) on his way to his first ATP final.

And also in the final the young Italian, when number 135 started in 2018 and 1.96 meters tall, showed why things are going really well for him this year. Neither Berrettini nor Bautista Agut allowed a single break point until the tiebreak of the first set. Both managed their serves safely to date. The balance was also evident in the points ratio up to 6:6 Bautista Agut: 34; Berrettini 33.

But in the tie-break the outsider documented his service strength with six aces alone. The Spaniard missed two set points when he made a double mistake and lost the 12th Ace of Berrettini a little later. After 55 minutes the Roman took the opening round.

And the match in the Roy Emerson Arena in the noble Swiss town of Gstaad remained highly competitive. Berrettini scored five break points, but could not use any of them. The first and only service breakthrough of the entire encounter he managed to win the match.

At the French Open Berrettini, by the way a big football fan of AC Florence, failed in the third round due to the later finalist Dominic Thiem (Austria). In four sentences. In Doha he had reached the round of 16 as qualifier at the beginning of the season, but had clearly failed there due to Peter Gojowczyk (Munich).