"There were days I couldn't get up": Matteo Berrettini recalls struggles of past 12 months, says he was close to quitting tennis

Matteo Berrettini has had a tumultuous time in 2023 with injuries seeing him sidelined basically for all of the season. Even when he returned to form earlier at Wimbledon, he was met with more injury problems before ending his season early.

He has also battled with his girlfriend Melissa Satta being accused of being the catalyst for Berrettini's tennis woes and even to blame for his dark period.

He opened up on that dark period while at the Davis Cup supporting Italy who won against the Netherlands in the Quarter-Finals. He said at times he couldn't get out of bed due to the agony both physically and mentally and that he even thought about quitting tennis at one point.

"I seriously thought about quitting once, I saw everything was dark. My thought was: I'll start again, I'll do my best to come back and then something else will happen," he said in a press conference.

"I said to myself: I can't keep going up and down like this, it really becomes agony and I don't want it to become that for me even though I love this sport' We play a sport that doesn't allow us to take time when we have it need because you always have the feeling of chasing, always the feeling that others are playing and surpassing you.

"And you're stuck in the pits, you lose points and pace and then you come back earlier than you should. Luckily there are a lot of people who love me and have tried in every way to make me feel better. Then I am someone who believes a lot in being in the dark and so there were days I couldn't get up.

"Even though I had to do physical therapy, it was hard for me to get out of bed and go to physical therapy. And so I said to myself: You know what? It's okay to not feel like doing anything. The important thing is to understand a little why and then try to find something that gets you out of bed straight away.

"I asked myself what more can I do, I realized that it's not a question of ranking. It's not a question of money. It's a real challenge with myself. People forget quickly. I don't forget what I did. Quoting Vincenzo when we spoke for the last time before we stopped working together.

"He told me: You have never missed a training session. You never missed a beat. You never took your mind off what you were doing. I know this."