Berrettini breezes to Gstaad title: 'I found the right energy'

p a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/matteo-berrettini/bk40/overview'Matteo Berrettini/a wasted little time charging to his ninth ATP Tour title on Sunday at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/gstaad/314/overview'EFG Swiss Open Gstaad/a. /p

p The sixth seed dispatched a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/quentin-halys/hb64/overview'Quentin Halys/a 6-3, 6-1 in just 59 minutes in the championship match at the clay-court ATP 250. Berrettini clinched the opening break of the match shortly before the match was suspended for 30 minutes due to rain. When the players returned to court with the Italian leading 5-3, he promptly won seven of the next eight games to claim the trophy in the Swiss Alps for the second time. /p

p “It feels unbelievable. It feels like it was yesterday that I won my first title here six years ago, but a lot of matches and a lot of things happened," said Berrettini in his post-match interview. "I’m just so glad that I can keep playing and enjoying, and I think I found the energy of six years ago during this week. This place is special for me. I’m just so happy.” /p

p It was Berrettini’s second clay ATP 250 title of the season — he also won in April in Marrakech. The former World No. 6 was outside the Top 150 in the PIF ATP Rankings as recently as March after a difficult 12 months with injuries. Now 16-6 for the 2024 season, he will return to the Top 50 for the first time since August 2023 on Monday. /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"Matteo#39;s Swiss bliss ????????????????brbrATP first-time titlist at Gstaad 2018, a href="https://twitter.com/MattBerrettini?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@MattBerrettini/a is back in the winner#39;s circle!a href="https://twitter.com/SwissOpenGstaad?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@SwissOpenGstaad/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ATPGstaad?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#ATPGstaad/a a href="https://t.co/QeqEW7AFye"pic.twitter.com/QeqEW7AFye/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1814980269855707430?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"July 21, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p The only moment of peril for Berrettini in his third Gstaad championship-match appearance came when he faced three break points at 2-3, 0/40 in the opening set. As he did so often during his run this week, the Italian found some big first serves when he needed them to escape the danger, and his break of Halys’ serve in the next game ultimately turned the match in his favour. /p

p Berrettini finished his maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head clash against Halys having won 90 per cent (26/29) of points behind his first delivery, according to Infosys ATP Stats, as he expertly capitalised on the Frenchman's drop of level after the rain delay. /p

p “It was his first final, so for sure a lot of thoughts you might think in those moments, especially when you stop and you just got broken," said Berrettini. "At the beginning, I was trying to figure out how to play, because during the week the conditions were really different. /p

p “Every day was different. It was really windy, then it was a bit wet, and today was really cold and drizzling. It took me a little bit. I was able to not get broken from 0/40 and I think from then on I found the right energy. I think when we stopped, I came back on court and found the perfect [rhythm].” /p

p Although he could not match Berrettini on Sunday, Halys will on Monday rise 67 spots to No. 125 in the PIF ATP Rankings as a result of his Gstaad run. The Frenchman is chasing a return to the Top 100 for the first time since last December. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p