Adrian Mannarino to challenge Jannik Sinner in Indian Wells

Between these two pretty handlers of balls, It was sometimes a festival of well licked exchanges, strewn with break points. And in this game, Adrian Mannarino was the most skilful. Both to save these break points (nine out of eleven, including three in a row when he was trailing 3-2 in the 1st set), and to end up derailing a Lorenzo Musetti who lost confidence in 2023 with a single victory. in his basket.

If he often swung his racket, and even collected a penalty point for a verbal abuse towards a spectator who forced on the “Forza” to be caught at 4-4 in the second set, the Frenchman did not flinch. Breaking in stride and then concluding the match with an unprecedented brutal forehand attack. Here he is in the 3rd round, not very far from equaling his best performance here of an 8th final in 2015. But for that, he will have to beat Jannik Sinner (13th in the world), another Italian winner of another Frenchman on Saturday (Richard Gasquet), whom he has never beaten in two confrontations.

“There was a lot of wind, it was not easy, said Mannarino after his victory. Lorenzo is not necessarily a hard player, he has patterns on clay… It could go both ways. It’s good to win without drawing on physical reserves after a first round against Thiem which left some traces. That’s what tensed me up a bit, I felt like I couldn’t last a very long game. On the level of play, I can’t rely too much on this kind of particular encounter. »

And on the point of penalty, he recognized his “fault” by granting himself extenuating circumstances. “There were guys who spoke badly to me, warmed me up a bit, with little double-barreled insults, like saying ‘Forza’ between the first and the second ball. The whole game, you try to contain yourself. There’s a 5-3 ball where I fall to the ground hitting my head, and behind I was a little somewhere else. At that point, it pissed me off a bit and I said something that wasn’t great… You get insulted on social media, you get insulted on the court, after a moment you just want to be able to answer from time to time. But you have to deal with…”