Roland Garros, Berrettini: "Another withdrawal, I'm tired."

"I'm tired of having to retire." Matteo Berrettini is once again dealing with a physical problem. The thirty-year-old Roman was forced to abandon his Roland Garros quarterfinal match against Matteo Arnaldi. His voice low, his disappointment understandable: Berrettini answered questions in the press room at the press conference that capped a bitter evening. "Halfway through the first set, I felt something while serving. We were fighting; the match was incredibly tough, so I didn't think much about it at the time. I kept going, but the more I played, the more discomfort I felt. I called a medical timeout; I was in a lot of pain. I tried to continue, but it hurt too much," he said, explaining his decision as "inevitable and correct: this isn't the last tournament I'll play." To determine the extent of the injury, we'll have to wait for further tests. 

“It's a hip problem, I don't know exactly what it is. I've never had anything like that in that area. At the end of 2019, I had a problem with my right hip, but the pain was different. I hope I haven't made the problem worse, I hope it's nothing too serious. We need to wait for the tests: if I had continued playing, I would have certainly aggravated the situation and the recovery time would have been longer. I had no choice,” he says. The goal is to regain fitness for the grass-court season and in particular for Wimbledon, which starts in less than a month. 

The bitterness of a player who has had to contend with a staggering series of physical problems in recent years remains: "I've been through it many times, I'm tired of retiring. I didn't want the tournament to end like this, I wanted to finish the match. If you lose, the feeling is different: you think about what you could have done better. This way, however, I didn't have the chance to compete until the end. And that's what happened in recent years," says Berrettini. There are reasons to see the glass half full: before the break, he had an excellent Roland Garros all the way to the quarterfinals. "I have to try to think about the positives of this tournament; just a few days ago, it would have been incredible to think of reaching the quarterfinals. I'll try to go home with a smile, even if it will be difficult." 

(Adnkronos)