The service turn at 4-3 in the third set between Flavio Cobolli and Felix Auger-Aliassime, Canadian, number four in the world, for better or for worse is the key to everything: two points already scored and wasted with great enthusiasm by Cobolli raised fears that the quarter-final had turned for the worse. Because it is the kind of error that, even more so, lends itself to being stuck like a nail between the wheels in the gears of the mind and jam everything. And instead Flavio Cobolli confirms himself in his best attitude: being someone who takes the risk even, or rather perhaps more so, when the game gets dirty, someone who doesn’t give up even at the cost of having to go back up, at the cost of fouling a few shots.
The order of factors changes, the product does not change: Italian tennis is mathematically in the final in Paris 2026 even with Jannik Sinner knocked out in the second round from what cycling jargon would call a phenomenal “crush”, after having given up there for six months like no one ever has.
While social media fights to blame the number one for the third match lost in the season, Italian tennis proves that it does not depend on its flagship, on the contrary.
As in the third consecutive Davis Cup, the others take all the spaces left free by the two giant kids who for three years have been playing another game of tennis, superior to everyone else.
However it ends up, there will be an Italian in the final, even if at the price of a double fratricidal clash: Matteo against Matteo, a sort of Kramer against Kramer in the quarter-final which pits Berrettini against Arnaldi, the two reunited, the winner of which will meet Flavio Cobolli in the semi-final.
There waiting for the finalist, there will be the winner between Mensik and Sasha Zverev, the man who by definition must seize the moment to win the first slam of his career in the absence of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, his undeniable bête noire. Equal and opposite situation compared to the Italian, whoever he is, who will try to steal the space left open by the number one in the now very thick competition of Italian tennis. It will be a good fight and a good story. Also because all its protagonists are enjoying the chance of their sporting lives.
