Jannik Sinner overcame his physical struggles to lead Daniil Medvedev in a deciding set before rain stopped their compelling Italian Open semi-final.<\/p>\n
Sinner regularly leant on his racquet to support himself and had treatment on his thigh during a medical timeout in the third set.<\/p>\n
However, the 24-year-old was 6-2 5-7 4-2 in front when the weather resulted in the match being postponed until Saturday. <\/p>\n
Sinner had looked set to steamroller Medvedev after imperiously racing into a 4-0 lead on the way to taking the first set.<\/p>\n
However, Medvedev kept his cool as he took advantage of a drop in the Italian’s energy and quality to take a 3-0 lead in the second set.<\/p>\n
Sinner held a lengthy fourth game to prevent himself going 4-0 down and, despite showing visible signs he was struggling physically, broke back against the Russian.<\/p>\n
Medvedev kept up the pressure on his rival and it eventually paid off when he took a break point with Sinner serving to stay in the second set.<\/p>\n
It was the first set the world number one had dropped in this year’s tournament.<\/p>\n
Sinner, who is aiming to extend his record of ATP Masters 1000 wins to 33, had three break points in the third game of the decider and gave out a roar when he took the second after Medvedev sent a backhand long.<\/p>\n
Rain stopped play with Sinner 4-2 up in the decider and organisers later decided the match would resume on Saturday. <\/p>\n
The winner will face Casper Ruud, who overcame Italy’s world number 20 Luciano Darderi 6-1 6-1 to reach his first Italian Open final following a rain-interrupted match.<\/p>\n
“It’s my 10th semi-final I think in a Masters 1000 and it was his first so you try to use that experience to your advantage and I think I did that well today,” said Norway’s Ruud.<\/p>\n
“He was maybe a little bit stressed, a little bit nervous of the occasion, but I tried to stay focused and kind of in my own tunnel vision.”<\/p>\n
And looking forward to the final he said: “It will be a tough match no matter who it is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jannik Sinner overcame his physical struggles to lead Daniil Medvedev in a deciding set before rain stopped their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-586594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}