![\"tennis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pro-Player-Gear-610X150-03.jpg\")
<\/a>tennis express pro player gear<\/p>\nThe World No. 20, riding a wave of support from the Italian faithful, ratcheted up his level as Zverev, who had controlled much of the afternoon, began to wobble. The crowd erupted, and the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n
Darderi saved four match points and won the final seven games of a stunning 1-6, 7-6(10), 6-0 victory to reach his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal and earn his maiden Top 10 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the beginning, I was not feeling really good physically, but in the second set, I took some sugar, and I was really lucky because he gave me a lot of games,\u201d Darderi said on court, a gold cross dangling from his necklace as he fielded questions. \u201cAt 5-3 in the second set, I was done. I think I was having a small chance in the second set that he gave me at 5-4, so I took it and the tiebreak was a lot of pressure for me and for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zverev played the match points poorly, making several costly errors as the crowd rallied behind Darderi, who met the moment with fearless tennis and an underdog spirit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really nice, because it was really a fight mentally against myself, and this is the most important thing from today,\u201d Darderi said. \u201cIt\u2019s a dream to be here in the quarterfinals, because it\u2019s the tournament of my life here. It\u2019s in Italy, you have just one big tournament, and for the moment, to reach quarterfinals here for the first time, it\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darderi had been 0-5 against Top 10 opponents entering Tuesday\u2019s clash with the World No. 3, but the 24-year-old has been steadily rising for some time. The clay-court specialist reached his 14th ATP quarterfinal on the surface, where he also won a title earlier this season in Santiago (he has five ATP clay titles, all at 250 level).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I have the level for anyone, but tennis is like this, you can beat Sascha today, and then you can lose against No. 50 in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is tennis. Sascha is an amazing player, with a lot of big achievements in tennis, so I have a lot of respect for him. He\u2019s number two in the world. It\u2019s just one match, we have to keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darderi will next face fast-rising Rafael Jodar in the quarterfinals. The Spanish teenager raced past Learner Tien earlier on Tuesday, 6-1, 6-4, to improve to 15-2 on clay this season.<\/p>\n
Also victorious on Tuesday were Casper Ruud, who defeated Lorenzo Musetti, 6-3, 6-1, and Karen Khachanov, who topped Croatia\u2019s Dino Prizmic, 6-1, 7-5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crunch time \u2014 down a set and trailing 5-3 in the second against two-time Rome champion Alexander Zverev…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-666914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}