Internazionali Roma, Nardi and Ferrari hit the wild cards for the qualifiers

A tribute to tranquility. Knowing how to manage emotions and bad moments, double faults and long lines out of an inch. Luca Nardi and Gianmarco Ferrari are the two blue wild cards for qualifying for the Rome Internationals. Cold and concrete. The first is 18 years old and he beat Cecchinato for retirement of the latter, former number 16 in the world. He had won 6-4 in the first set and was 1-0 in the second. Ferrari, 21, got the better of Giulio Zeppieri after foiling a couple of match points (1-6 7-5 6-4). Premise: the main draw in Rome is still far away, there is talk of qualifications, but the two boys will play it with their heads held high.

Who is Ferrari

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Ferrari has snatched the applause of the Forum on more than one occasion. In the third set, after a couple of setbacks along the line, a couple of guys commented to each other: “Not bad ‘this boy eh”. The common thought of the rest. Born in 2000, Tuscan from Prato, he started from the first round of the pre-qualifications and took a wild card for the qualifications. He beat Ortenzi (6-2, 6-1), Brugnerotto (6-4 7-5), Moroni (6-2 7-5) and Zeppieri. In the quarter-finals he lost in two sets against Giovanni Fonio, on stage tomorrow against Francesco Passaro for a place in the main draw. Powerful left-handed, few short balls and more broadsides, he put Zappieri in difficulty with courage and concreteness. Giulio, between a ball thrown into the stands and a racket thrown away, tried to put him in difficulty with some unpredictable shots (see a serve from below in the third set), but Ferrari did not take the bait. At the end of the game he let out a liberating cry. A pupil of Diego Nargiso, present in the stands, he lives up to what he wrote a year ago on Instagram: “You live on dreams”. The first photo published is with Sinner in 2015. Gianmarco was 15 years old, Jannik 14. The South Tyrolean ascent started from Rome, main draw in 2019 thanks to a wild card. Who knows if Gianmarco will be able to emulate him.

Who is Nardi

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Between him and Cecchinato there are 11 years of difference and about seventy places in the standings, but the place in the qualifiers is up to him. Ceck forfeited the second set, shook hands with his opponent after complimenting him and then left the scene. Nardi, defeated yesterday by Matteo Arnaldi in the quarters of pre-qualifying, is a talented man who has been talked about well since 2018, when he became the youngest Italian tennis player to have snatched a point in the ATP ranking. At 14 years and 10 months he pushed himself to the quarters of the Italy F15 tournament. He boasts two Challengers in singles and a main draw of an ATP tournament thanks to a wild card, the European Open in Antwerp, where he came out in the first round against the American Marcos Giron. He is currently 198 in the world. Stefano Pescosolido praised him some time ago: “Luca manages to play straight serve naturally, he has solutions in all parts of the pitch, from the backhand to the game on the fly”. Marchigiano from Pesaro, the family in the stands cheering, a few years ago spoke like this: “It does not matter to win now, but when I grow up.” At 18 the time has come.