Berrettini fires 23 aces and fights back to win his Shanghai opener

Losing a close opening set can turn a routine-looking match into a test of patience. Matteo Berrettini responded by making the next two sets much less comfortable for the player across the net.

The Italian came back to beat Aleksandar Kovacevic 6–7(3), 6–1, 6–4 in the first round of the Shanghai Masters on October 7. It was a strong start at a tournament where he reached the semi-finals in 2019.

According to the tournament’s official ATP report, Berrettini hit 23 aces and did not face a break point. He will next play American Brandon Nakashima.

The serve kept him in control

The result has a useful little tennis lesson inside it: you can protect every service game and still lose a set. Kovacevic took the opening tie-break, leaving Berrettini needing to win both remaining sets to stay in the tournament.

Berrettini did exactly that. He pulled away in the second set and then secured the deciding set with a single break. La Repubblica’s report described the early break in the third set as decisive, alongside his heavy serving.

The match statistics on Tennis.com make the pattern clear. Berrettini won 43 of 47 points when his first serve landed, a success rate of 91%. He also won 18 of 22 points behind his second serve.

Those figures meant Kovacevic had very few openings when returning. Berrettini held all 15 of his service games. On the other side, he converted three of his 11 break-point opportunities, enough to turn the match around after the tie-break disappointment.

A good response after recent exits

Berrettini arrived after second-round losses at the US Open and in Tokyo, the ATP report noted. Shanghai offered another chance to build a run, and he said he was proud of the way he kept competing after falling behind.

That is different from declaring a full return to peak form. One first-round win cannot answer every question about a player’s season. It can, however, show what worked on a particular day, and here the serve and the response to losing the first set were clear positives.

Nakashima is the next challenge. Berrettini has earned that match, not a place in the later rounds or a trophy. For now, the reward is another opportunity to turn a promising performance into momentum.

There are flashy ways to announce yourself at a tournament. Holding serve all afternoon, hitting 23 aces and refusing to let one lost tie-break decide your day is a pretty convincing one.