Carballes Baena stuns Berrettini with late match comeback in Florence

Matteo Berrettini stepped onto the court today for his first singles match this week in Florence and he had a terrible time throwing away a 5-3 lead in the final set to lose 5-7.

Never a particularly good player indoors, Carballes Baena certainly demonstrated a fairly decent level today against an okay Berrettini who complicated things quite a bit. The Italian was lauded as one of the favourites to win the trophy this week but this first match was quite hard for him.

Berrettini played well to start the match applying heavy pressure on Carballes Baena who eventually surrendered his serve. The Italian wasted 3 set points at 5-3 and then one more at 5-4. He dropped his serve when serving at 5-4 to make it 5-5 but rallied with a solid push to take the first set 7-5.

He was dominant on his first serve but very poor on his second winning only 4 of 13 points. The second set was a crazy affair as Berrettini took an early 2-0 lead and then dropped four games in a row to fall behind 2-4. He made it 4-4 and the set ended in a tiebreak with Carballes Baena taking it 7-5.

The final one was a close and competitive one with Berrettinin taking a break midway through. He had a 5-3 lead and served for the match but got broken after being up 30-0. Carballes Baena then broke Berrettini to take the final set 7-5 and send the Italian packing in front of his native crowd.