Brazilian teenager Joao Fonseca kept his strong week going at the Rolex Monte Carlo Masters on Thursday, beating Italy’s Matteo Berrettini 6-3, 6-2 to reach the quarterfinals of an ATP Masters 1000 event for the first time. The match lasted 75 minutes. The 19-year-old delivered one of the most impressive wins of his young career on the clay in Monaco, using sharp angles, steady serving and aggressive baseline play to control much of the match. ATP Tour coverage described it as a high-quality performance in which Fonseca played with intensity and overwhelmed Berrettini in front of a packed crowd.
Fonseca set the tone early. He took the opening set 6-3 and never really let Berrettini settle into the kind of rhythm that had made the Italian one of the stories of the tournament a day earlier. Berrettini had entered the match coming off a stunning 6-0, 6-0 win over Daniil Medvedev in the previous round, one of the most lopsided results of the week in Monte Carlo.
Any thought that Berrettini might carry that momentum into Thursday quickly disappeared. Fonseca stayed composed, held his level, and kept pressure on the Italian from the back of the court. Stats from the match show the Brazilian was especially effective on serve, helping him avoid long stretches of trouble and allowing him to dictate the pace.
The result is another sign that Fonseca is becoming one of the most closely watched young players in men’s tennis. He is the first Brazilian man to reach a Masters 1000 quarterfinal since Thomaz Bellucci in Madrid in 2011 and is the youngest man to make the Monte Carlo quarterfinals since Rafael Nadal and Richard Gasquet did it in 2005.
Fonseca’s reward is a quarterfinal against Alexander Zverev, giving the Brazilian another major test as he tries to extend his best run yet at this level. For Berrettini, the loss ended a brief but memorable Monte Carlo run. His double-bagel win over Medvedev had turned heads across the tennis world, but on Thursday it was Fonseca who left the bigger mark.
