Matteo Berrettini Says He Stopped Cheering For Roger Federer

With four of the top ten ATP men progressing into the men’s pre-quarterfinal stage at the Wimbledon Championships 2019, the World Number three, Roger Federer will face his projected opponent Matteo Berrettini in Wimbledon’s fourth round. 

Berrettini idolized Federer all his career and he regards himself as a Federer fan, but when he realized the Swiss being in the same section as him at Wimbledon, he stopped supporting him as a fan.

“I kind of stopped cheering for him when I first saw my name and his name in the same draw. I realized I had to stop cheering for him,” Matteo Berrettini. “I think I have the weapons to win that match.”

Also, with yesterday’s win, Federer completed 98 match wins in SW19 and Berrettini is just five match wins old at the London major. Despite, Federer’s mastery on the surface, he feels the big server, Matteo Berrettini might intimidate his road to his 21st major title.

“I don’t know him very well, so that makes it a bit more tricky,” Roger Federer said. “I saw him play a little bit in Halle. Saw his run, of course, in Stuttgart. Now he’s backing it up here again. That’s not easy to do, especially when you’re sort of newer on the tour.”

Wimbledon’s 17th seed, Berrettini reached the fourth round of Grand Slam for the first in his career. The Italian played some remarkable tennis against Diego Schwartzman in the third round, which happened to be the longest match of the tournament so far. And the former World Number eight, Marcos Baghdatis played his farewell match against him.

“I’m expecting a tough one. I hope he has no energy left after today. I’m sure he’ll recover. He’s young. I’m sure we’ll see a tough match on Monday I guess it is,” Swiss World Number three continued.

This June, the 23-year-old, Matteo Berrettini reached his career-high ranking of World Number 20, extended his match winning streak on grass to eight and pulled off the title in Stuttgart.

Over there, Matteo Berrettini didn’t drop a single service game in the entire tournament and in the semifinals in Stuttgart, only Jan-Lennard Struff faced two chances to break Berrettini’s serve and the Italian held his serve 50 straight times.

Also, during his title win in Gstaad in 2018, Matteo Berrettini was unbroken throughout and he held his serve 49 straight times and saved nine break points en route to his championship victory. And till date, the Italian has collected three ATP titles.