By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday March 20, 2021
He came, he saw, and he thrilled to delight. The ATP career of Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti took a big step forward this week at Acapulco, and the Italian—as well as tennis fans—is hoping that it’s just the beginning of a beautiful career.
Musetti, a former junior No.1 and the 2019 Australian Open Boys Singles champion, qualified for the main draw and earned his first ever Top 10 win in the first round against No.9 Diego Schwartzman. Two more wins, against Frances Tiafoe and Grigor Dimitrov, placed him into the semis.
He has now played four ATP events, and reached the semis in two of them.
On Friday he fell to Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets, but it was clear from the crowd’s reaction after the match that Musetti possesses the “it” factor. The fans showered him with applause as he left the court.
Musetti couldn’t hide his excitement about how everything turned out.
"As I said yesterday it's a dream come true, since I was a kid I hoped and I dreamed to be one day Top 100, to enter on the tour, finally I got this, and it was incredible,” he said. “But I didn't realize that yet, because it's going to be next week, the new ranking so, I will try now to rest and to prepare best as possible for Miami and try to go as far as I can in Miami."
The Italian will rise to a projected 95 in the ATP rankings and become the youngest player inside the Top 100.
"Finally I will be Top 100 on the next week," he said after his loss to Tsitsipas. "A lot of goals that I had came true tonight. I did really a great performance and I'm really proud of myself."
The Italian will next play Miami, and after that he’ll come back to Europe to compete on his favorite surface – red clay.
But before any of that happens, he’ll have to get off of cloud nine.
"This is the best week of my life, talking about my tennis career," he said. "Yeah this is the jump that I had of ranking of wins against the Top 10 and to have the opportunity to play against Stefanos, he's an unbelievable player and to have the emotions of playing in a big stadium like this one, with a lot of fans cheering for me.
"As I said I didn't expect that. ... this week for me was a dream week. I couldn't believe what I did and I couldn't expect it. Since I was a kid I hoped that. You have to live the moment to believe in what you are doing. Every day was different, every day was a big emotion for me, and I will never forget this week."