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\u201cThe future of the season is foggy right now,\u201d he said. \u201cI struggle to think long-term. So far on red clay I haven\u2019t performed at my best, and I know that after Paris I\u2019ll have a gap where I can try to recover the points lost. But the priority remains feeling good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not winning. Not arresting the decline. Feeling good. For a player who entered 2026 as the world No. 5, fresh off a year that included a Monte-Carlo final, semi-finals in Madrid, Rome and Roland-Garros, and the Paris Olympic bronze medal, that is a meaningful recalibration of public expectation. <\/p>\n
Djokovic as a turning point<\/p>\n
The 2026 season turned on the Australian Open quarter-final in January, when Musetti was leading Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-3, 1-3 and was forced to retire with what was later confirmed as a psoas muscle injury. He missed the South American clay swing. He returned at Indian Wells in March and lost his opening match. A right arm issue forced him to withdraw from Miami before he had played.<\/p>\n
Monte-Carlo brought a first-round loss to Valentin Vacherot. Barcelona produced a quarter-final, Madrid a round of 16, and Rome, until Tuesday, looked as though it might be the moment the body finally cooperated.<\/p>\n
The tears after Cerundolo<\/p>\n
The Cer\u00fandolo match on Sunday was the warning. Musetti won 7-6, 6-4 and then collapsed on the clay in tears. \u201cIt was kind of a liberation,\u201d he said afterwards on Tennis Channel. \u201cTears of joy brought on by the frustration, the pressure, and also the physical part that I was not happy about.\u201d The match had drained him. The recovery did not arrive.<\/p>\n
By the time he stepped on court against Ruud on Tuesday, the body had given way again \u2013 the left leg this time, in a different location to the right-side problems that defined his early year, but the same overall pattern. He played, in his own words, \u201con one leg.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve always been many small injuries at important moments that have affected me mentally and physically\u201d<\/p>\n
He was afraid to put weight on it. The left leg is also the leg he hurt at Roland-Garros 2025, retiring mid-match against Carlos Alcaraz; whether the current pain is connected is not something Musetti himself was able to say. The pattern, as he framed it on Tuesday, defies easy diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve always been many small injuries at important moments that have affected me mentally and physically,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll continue to work to avoid it happening again. I\u2019ll try to change certain things to avoid injuries, but I struggle to find a single explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Musetti has, instead of a precise injury, is a chain of small problems whose only common feature is their timing. Each has arrived, on his account, at a moment when he was about to consolidate. Each has cost him a portion of what he had built. <\/p>\n
There is nothing in the press conference to suggest he cannot play well at Roland-Garros. There is nothing in it to suggest he will. And even less to suggest he will arrive in Paris in the physical and mental condition to perform at his peak. Roland-Garros still represents 800 of his 3,415 ATP points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lorenzo Musetti lost his round of 16 match in Rome on Tuesday, beaten by Casper Ruud in straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-666421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}