All week at the Queen\u2019s Club, Francisco Cer\u00fandolo has had an unlikely guest in his players\u2019 box: the No 10 Argentina shirt of Diego Maradona. And on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Hand of God, Cer\u00fandolo summoned tennis from the heavens to lift the biggest trophy of his career.<\/p>\n
But after fending off the American Tommy Paul 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-3 in an epic that lasted a record three hours and two minutes, Cer\u00fandolo said he had been inspired by another of his heroes: his father, Alejandro, who had flown to London to see him win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the first time my dad takes a flight and it\u2019s the first time he has watched me outside Argentina,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to congratulate my dad for taking a plane. It\u2019s Father\u2019s Day, so this is for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cer\u00fandolo, however, had to do things the hard way. He was a set and a break down against Paul before coming back to take the longest Queen\u2019s Club final in history, beating the previous record of two hours and 57 minutes set by Marian Cillic and Novak Djokovic<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to speak,\u201d Cer\u00fandolo said during his victory speech, having secured the title on his sixth match point. Just imagine how this talented, but occasionally brittle player, would have felt if he had thrown this one away?<\/p>\n Now, however, the 27-year-old Cer\u00fandolo can legitimately dream of making a run at Wimbledon. After all, Carlos Alcaraz is injured<\/a>, Djokovic is 39, and the French Open champion<\/a> Alexander Zverev has never won a title on grass.<\/p>\n Of course Jannik Sinner is rightly the prohibitive favourite. But if the heat dome over London lingers for another few weeks, all bets could be off, especially with Cer\u00fandolo\u2019s forehand \u2013 which was responsible for most of his 27 winners \u2013 firing like this.<\/p>\n It turned out to be a compelling final, and one which repeatedly zigged when you thought it would zag, starting with the opening game.<\/p>\n Paul had got here without dropping a set, but he started wildly and allowed his opponent an immediate break. Cer\u00fandolo then played sublime tennis until at 5-4 in the first set he was suddenly broken to love.<\/p>\n Soon the Argentinian had lost the tie-break too and when Paul broke to go 3-2 up in the second, the engraver on the huge Queen\u2019s Club trophy was on high alert. But from nowhere he then dropped his serve twice in quick succession and suddenly it was one set all.<\/p>\n By now the temperature on court was 29.5C. And the quality of tennis, like the mercury levels, continue to rise. At 3-2 Cer\u00fandolo got the break to move two games from victory, but more drama was to come.<\/p>\n First he had to save two breakpoints in the next game before increasing his lead to 5-2. And then five match points came and went before victory was finally sealed with an overhand smash.<\/p>\n Afterwards Paul was gracious in defeat, telling his opponent: \u201cWe always seem to have unreal matches and today you were the better player.\u201d<\/p>\n That much was true. And forget the Hand of God. This final was all about the forehand of Francisco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All week at the Queen\u2019s Club, Francisco Cer\u00fandolo has had an unlikely guest in his players\u2019 box: the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-273276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}