Francisco Cerundolo joins the list of Umag champions!
In the final match of the 34th Plava Laguna Croatia Open held on Saturday, the 25-year-old Argentinian player defeated Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti 2:6, 6:4, 7:6 (5) after three hours of amazing tennis, securing the third title in his career.
He also became the third Argentinian player to win the title at Stella Maris, as the tournament was already won by Guillermo Cañas (2004) and Guillermo Coria (2005). This is his second title won in Croatia, after winning at the ATP Challenger in Split in 2020.
At the start of the match, it didn’t seem that it would be so tied, since Musetti won the first set having lost only two games. The Argentinian opened the second set with 3:0, then lost his serve, but won a break in the tenth game and brought everything back into balance. Both players were brilliant in the third set, the audience enjoyed some amazing tennis, and it seemed that Musetti took a decisive step towards victory when he won a break to take the lead at 5:4.
However, Cerundolo fought back when the Italian player was serving for the match, and in the tie-break, the Argentinian took back the advantage and he was in the lead 3:1. Cerundolo turned it over yet again, winning six points in a row, and then it didn’t take him long to conclude the match.
The day before, in the semi-finals, Cerundolo defeated the top-seeded player, Russian Andrey Rublev, so on his road to winning this tournament title he had to defeat two top-seeded players. This is the third time this happened in Umag, after Félix Mantilla in 1997 and Pablo Cuevas in 2014.
