Matteo Berrettini paid tribute to Roger Federer following his Laver Cup victory over Felix Auger-Aliassime on day 2 of the tournament.
The Italian won 7-6(11), 4-6, 10-7 in over an hour to take a 6-4 lead for Team Europe over Team World, before American Taylor Fritz took out Cameron Norrie 6-1 4-6 10-8 to level the competition up at 6-6 ahead of Saturday’s evening session.
Following a tight opening set where neither player managed to break serve, Auger-Aliassime saw a set point come and go at 9-8 up in the tie-break, before the Italian took the set at the sixth time of asking.
The first break of the match came in the second set for the Canadian, following a missed forehand from Berrettini at 4-4, before Auger-Aliassime took the match to a 10 point deciding tie-break. Despite a costly forehand error in the second set, Berrettini hit a wondrous shot off that wing to go up a two mini-breaks in the champions tie-break and capitalised off the Canadian’s double-fault. He was able to see out the match 10-8 and dedicated his win to his idol Roger Federer, who retired from the sport on Friday night alongside long-time rival and friend Rafael Nadal.
Berrettini said after the match, ‘I was very emotional. The reason why I chose to be a tennis player was because of him. When I was a kid and he was playing in Rome I was trying to sneak into centre court because I didn’t have a ticket!,’ while Federer was watching on from Team Europe’s bench.
He also added that he felt like ‘he couldn’t screw up’ after Federer gave him some advice during the match.
In the second match of the afternoon session, Taylor Fritz impressed in the early stages, and broke Norrie’s serve three times to take the opening set 6-1.
Norrie responded well in the second set, and after exchanging breaks early on, he hit a stunning forehand down the line to break the Fritz serve at 4-4, before taking the set 6-4.
Fritz proved too strong in the deciding tie-break, and after some costly errors from Norrie’s racket, took it 10-8, to level the series at 6 points apiece ahead of tonights matches, which feature Novak Djokovic in singles and doubles action.
