Clamorous comeback by Cobolli
At the Sparkasse Challenger Val Gardena Südtirol four Italian players reached the quarter-finals. After Luca Nardi and Giulio Zeppieri on Wednesday, Andrea Vavassori and Flavio Cobolli also won their second match in the main draw at the Gardena tournament today. Vavassori eliminated qualifier Sandro Kopp (Austria) with 6:3, 6:4 and emphasised that he is not only a good doubles player. In the evening Cobolli's great comeback against the Swiss Alexander Ritschard. Down 1:5 at the start, the tournament's sixth seed ended up winning 7:5, 6:1.
Vavassori commented at the end of the match: "I started a little bit maIe in the first round in the first set against Marozsan due to some tiredness, because I have played so much this year, but I am happy to have won in the first round and to have continued in this vein. In the first round 21 aces, today 17. I hope to continue like this. If you serve well here, you're already halfway there." The 27-year-old reached his fifth challenger quarter-final this year. He will face No. 1 Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic on Friday. The world No. 115 prevailed over Frenchman Antoine Escoffier 6-3, 6-1 this afternoon. "It was a good performance from my side, especially in my head. I played well from the start, I lost my serve once but I broke straight away. I am number 1, it's true, but it doesn't matter if you are number 1 or 2 or 3 seed. The level is very good. Let's see how it goes with Vavassori'.
In the evening, Cobolli became the fourth Italian to reach the quarters. In the beginning, things were not going well for him. But he bounced back from 1:5 down, won nine games in a row, moved to 7-5, 3-0 and won easily. "I started off a bit tense and got nervous. Much of the first set slipped away from me, but I was good at meditating between games. That helped me come out of it easily. I have a very tough match ahead of me tomorrow."
Cobolli's opponent in the semifinals is the experienced Czech Lukas Rosol, who cancelled no less than five set points before beating Argentina's Marco Trungelliti 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4). Two in the tie-break of the first set at 4:6 and three more at the end of the second.
