Cristian Garin added one of his best wins in recent times at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia this Friday: being set and broken, despite facing the tournament’s No. 16 seed and suffering from apparent discomfort in his back. Despite this, there was a need for medical treatment. Of note, the Chilean won 4–6, 6–3, 6–4.
victim? American Tommy Paul, No. 17 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings and had a 6–4, 2–1 advantage on serve and 6–4, 3–2 on serve. However, everything changed for Garrin on the sixth play of the second quarter. From there she won six games in a row, including the first game to return from the decider, and her confidence grew rapidly.
Although she lost serve at 1-2, she broke in the next game to once again take the lead which she was able to defend for her 16th win of the season. Of those 16, 12 have come against rivals with a higher ranking than themselves. In addition, this Friday is the second best ranking day and the first after defeating No. 4 Casper Ruud on the hard courts of Indian Wells.
The world number 79 is in such a positive frame of mind at the moment that he has carried on with his career-best run of at least two wins in every tournament. There are six tournaments in a row in which he has won more than one in each: Indian Wells, Miami, Houston, Munich, Madrid and Rome. And at the Italian Masters 1000 he seems confident enough to keep adding on.
A quarter-finalist at the event in 2022, ‘Gago’ won the deciding tie-break against Argentina’s Pedro Cachin, and now he shows his prowess again against one of the semi-finalists of the Australian Open 2023. Pepperstone is ranked No. 104 in the ATP Live Rankings. Another win will take him to number 99 on the live ladder.
Her next opponent will be Serbian Leslo Jare, who came out with a partial 6-2, 6-4 score over 23rd seed Bottic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands. Garin leads 1-0 in the ATP head-to-head record between the two after their win at the Canadian Masters 1000 in 2019.
