All week at the Queen\u2019s Club, \u00adFrancisco Cer\u00fandolo has had an unlikely guest in his players\u2019 box: the No\u00a010 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\u00a0for taking a plane. It\u2019s Father\u2019s Day, so this is for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cer\u00fandolo added: \u201cWhen I was born, he stopped travelling, because he hated planes and he couldn\u2019t handle it. Last year he started taking therapy to approach his fear. Last week, he was saying: \u2018I will go to the grass season.\u2019 He always loved London and always loved grass, and he never came.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe, my brother and my sister were saying: \u2018OK, Dad, until you are in the plane, we don\u2019t believe you.\u2019 They took the plane yesterday evening. I knew they were landing in London around 2:30pm. So I knew if the match was short, they wouldn\u2019t arrive. But if the match was longer, maybe they could.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cer\u00fandolo 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\u00a0Club final in\u00a0history, \u00adbeating the previous\u00a0record of two hours and\u00a057\u00a0\u00adminutes set by Marian Cilic and Novak \u00adDjokovic<\/a> in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to speak,\u201d \u00adCer\u00fandolo said during his \u00advictory speech, having\u00a0secured the title on his sixth match point. Just imagine how this talented but occasionally \u00adbrittle player would have felt if he had thrown this one away.<\/p>\n Now, however, the 27-year-old 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\u00a0heat dome over London \u00adlingers for another few weeks, all bets could\u00a0be off, especially with Cer\u00fandolo\u2019s forehand \u2013 which was responsible for most of his 27 \u00adwinners\u00a0\u2013 firing\u00a0like\u00a0this.<\/p>\n It turned out to be a \u00adcompelling final, and one that repeatedly zigged when you thought it would zag, \u00adstarting with the opening game.<\/p>\n Paul had got here without \u00addropping a set, but he started wildly and allowed his opponent an \u00adimmediate break. Cer\u00fandolo then played \u00adsublime 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\u00a0on high alert. But from nowhere the American 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, continued 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 break points in the next game before increasing his lead to 5-2. Then five match points came and went before victory was finally sealed with an overhand smash.<\/p>\n 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, \u00adFrancisco Cer\u00fandolo has had an unlikely guest in his players\u2019 box: the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-717984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}