Flavio Cobolli, the 10th seed, beat Canadian fourth seed Félix Auger-Aliassime 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 on Court Philippe-Chatrier on Wednesday afternoon to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time in his career – and to guarantee that an Italian man will play in Sunday’s Roland-Garros final, the first time since 1976 that this will have been true.
“It was incredible winning [like this]”, Cobolli said on court. “We had two matches in one. I went to the toilet to think a bit, to change something. And I think this is the best [tennis] I’ve ever played in my life. I felt like this is the chance of my life, and I have to give everything. Today I did it, so I’m really happy”.
The 24-year-old from Rome’s quarter-final win, combined with the all-Italian quarter-final between Matteo Berrettini and Matteo Arnaldi later on Wednesday evening, ensures that at least two of the four men’s semi-finalists are Italian, and at least one Italian will be in the final.
In Jannik Sinner’s part of the draw, isn’t is incredible?
The contest with Auger-Aliassime had the look of a four-set match decided on a single hinge. The Canadian, who had won his first three matches having dropped the opening set each time and then dispatched Alejandro Tabilo in straight sets in the round of 16, took the opening set 6-4 with a single break – his cleanest opening half of any match this fortnight.
He led 3-1 in the second, with the break, and looked to be moving away from his opponent on a court where he had played as well as he had at any point this year. Cobolli broke back. From that moment to the end of the match he held all 13 of his service games consecutively, broke Auger-Aliassime once in each of the second, third and fourth sets, and produced the kind of clay-court tennis that had eluded him at this tournament until two months ago.
The numbers around Cobolli’s fortnight tell the story of why this is the breakthrough. He has dropped only two sets across the tournament – the third set to Zachary Svajda in the round of 16, and the opening set on Thursday. He had been 0-6 against top-10 opponents at Grand Slam tournaments before Wednesday, having reached only one previous major quarter-final, at Wimbledon last year.
The Roman has spent his career producing high-quality clay-court tennis at Masters 1000 level – semi-finals in Hamburg, a final in Bucharest, a final in Acapulco – but never producing it at a major when the moment arrived. On Wednesday he did.
Hard for Auger-Aliassime
The win takes him into a semi-final against either Berrettini, the 2021 Wimbledon finalist and 2021 Roland-Garros quarter-finalist who has spent the past three years rebuilding from a series of injuries, or Arnaldi, the world No. 104 who has reached the quarter-finals after spending 17 hours and 42 minutes on court – the longest path to a Grand Slam quarter-final in the 35 years the ATP has been keeping match times. Either contest will be an all-Italian semi-final.
Berrettini against Arnaldi follows on Wednesday evening.
For Auger-Aliassime, the loss ends the deepest Roland-Garros run of his career on a court that had not been kind to him for most of the past five years – six first-round exits in seven Roland-Garros appearances before this one, and a fourth-round survival of Daniel Altmaier in the first round that had set the tone for a fortnight of slow starts.