Borna Coric achieved the perfect week: from the first round to victory in the Cincinnati 1000 tournament. The tennis player, who started from position number 152 in the ranking, had to overcome a difficult path to reach the final victory: starting with Lorenzo Musetti and finishing by the last obstacle, Stefanos Tsitsipas, going through an unimaginable victory in the second round against Rafael Nadal; In this way Roberto Bautista-Agut and two Top Ten such as Felix Auger-Aliassime and Cameron Norrie were also defeated.
The Croatian therefore joins in his own right the list of players who have won a Masters 1000 for the first time in his career this year. In the last 15 titles, there have been seven new 1000 tournament winners: Hubert Hurkacz in Miami, Stefanos Tsitsipas in Monte Carlo, Cameron Norrie in Indian Wells in 2021; Taylor Fritz in Indian Wells, Carlos Alcaraz in Miami, Pablo Carreño Busta in Montreal, Borna Coric in Cincinnati in 2022.
This season, in particular, there have been seven different champions in the eight 1000 tournaments played so far: only the Spanish number two has repeated twice, winning in both Miami and Madrid. Two other ‘veterans’ are added to the list referring to 2022: Tsitsipas in Monte Carlo and Djokovic in Rome.
Novak Djokovic is the only member of the Big 3 who has won a 1000 title in the last calendar year: his victory in Rome against Stefanos Tsitsipas in 2022, his victory in Paris-Bercy against Daniil Medvedev in 2021.
Corretja talks about Alcaraz
A few days before the start of the 2022 edition of the US Open, Alex Corretja spoke on Eurosport about his young compatriot Carlos Alcaraz, already 4th player in the world and promised a bright future.
“What Carlos is doing is amazing. I mean, he’s world number four and he’s been playing great tennis all season. When he finished Roland‐Garros, I think he needed time to recover from everything he did. At Wimbledon he lost to Sinner because he was playing really good tennis.
And then this summer, he played, ok, he didn’t win these tournaments (Umag and Hamburg, editor’s note). But, I mean, he played amazing. And I’m not worried at all. He’s going to win grand slams and he’s going to be number one, that’s for sure.
He is ready.” The last Masters won by Rafael Nadal, on the other hand, was in May 2021, when the Spaniard triumphed at the Internazionali d’Italia against the Belgrade tennis player.
