{"id":84932,"date":"2023-04-28T13:07:09","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T11:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/?p=84932"},"modified":"2023-04-28T13:07:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T11:07:09","slug":"qualifier-arnaldi-plays-match-of-his-life-to-stun-ruud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/qualifier-arnaldi-plays-match-of-his-life-to-stun-ruud\/","title":{"rendered":"Qualifier Arnaldi plays \u2018match of his life\u2019 to stun Ruud"},"content":{"rendered":"

World No.105 Matteo Arnaldi scored the biggest victory of his career by knocking out Norwegian No.3 seed Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-4 to move into the Mutua Madrid Open third round on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 22-year-old qualifier, who saved a match point in his first-round triumph over Benoit Paire, entered the contest against Ruud with a 2-10 career win-loss record against top-100 opponents, and was 0-4 against players ranked in the top-50.<\/span><\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t stop Arnaldi from putting together a calm and collected performance on Estadio Arantxa Sanchez to dispatch the Roland-Garros and US Open finalist in one hour and 33 minutes, hitting 35 winners and 13 unforced errors en route.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to say really,\u201d said an elated Arnaldi after the match.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Barcelona I was playing very good, but when I came here it was different, the ball bounces so high, totally different conditions. I struggled a bit in the first round with Paire, third set against Arthur Fils in the last round of qualies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut then maybe the stadium, maybe a bit more pressure on him, I tried to go on court free and today I played the best match of my life for sure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruud dropped serve in game four but immediately retaliated to get back on level terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

An 11-minute marathon game saw Arnaldi get a decisive break \u2013 on his fourth opportunity \u2013 to carve out a 5-3 lead and the Italian faced no trouble closing out the set on the 50-minute mark. He dished out 19 winners in that frame.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arnaldi opened the second set with a break of serve and ended up winning 17 points in a row before Ruud finally stopped the bleeding and held for 1-2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruud had a chance to break back in the eighth game but Arnaldi charged the net and found a smooth volley to save the break point and he marched on towards victory in commanding fashion.<\/span><\/p>\n

His next opponent will be home favourite Jaume Munar, whom Arnaldi beat last week in Barcelona to notch the first ATP main draw victory of his career.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Italian is expected to make his top-100 debut when the new rankings are released after the tournament.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World No.105 Matteo Arnaldi scored the biggest victory of his career by knocking out Norwegian No.3 seed Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-4 to move into the Mutua Madrid Open third round on Friday. The 22-year-old qualifier, who saved a match point in his first-round triumph over Benoit Paire, entered the contest against Ruud with a 2-10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":84933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[824],"tags":[835,988,831],"class_list":["post-84932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-mutua-en","tag-2023-es-en","tag-matteo-arnaldi","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84935,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84932\/revisions\/84935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}