{"id":106128,"date":"2026-06-04T11:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=106128"},"modified":"2026-06-04T11:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:41:12","slug":"matteo-berrettini-injury-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2026\/06\/04\/matteo-berrettini-injury-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Matteo Berrettini Continues to Be Unlucky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matteo Berrettini was, for four rounds at Roland Garros, the story nobody had dared to script. He had returned to the French Open<\/a> for the first time since 2021, was playing clean, confident tennis, and had reached the quarterfinals relatively unharmed. A semifinal was genuinely in reach. Then, in the middle of his quarterfinal against compatriot Matteo Arnaldi, he began feeling something in his left hip while serving. He retired in the second set, forced out of the match by injury once again. He was seen crying as he sat in his chair, until he eventually stood to embrace his opponent. The tournament that had felt like a redemption arc ended the same way so many chapters in Matteo Berrettini’s career have ended: with a body that simply would not cooperate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He led 3-0 in the first set. He was on the Philippe-Chatrier court in front of a crowd that was entirely on his side. And still.<\/span><\/p>\n

Matteo Berrettini Can’t Catch a Break<\/span><\/h2>\n

The list of things Matteo Berrettini has missed because of injury is long enough to constitute a career in itself. He reached the 2021 Wimbledon final<\/a>, a moment that announced him as a genuine top-five player in the world, when all appeared to be coming together, and then spent the better part of four years being gradually dismantled by his own body.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2022, he missed the French Open after hand surgery following his Indian Wells quarterfinal loss, with the recovery process costing him the entire European clay swing. In 2023, he missed the French Open<\/a> for a second consecutive year, this time due to an abdominal injury sustained during his third-round win at Monte-Carlo, which also caused him to miss Madrid and Rome. He then withdrew from the 2024 Australian Open on the eve of his first-round match with a right foot injury, another setback having already suffered an ankle injury that forced a second-round retirement at the 2023 US Open and a tear in an oblique muscle that cost him weeks of the season. He also pulled out of the 2025 French Open after retiring against Ruud at the Italian Open and withdrawing from Madrid with an abdominal injury the fortnight before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hand. Abdomen. Foot. Ankle. Oblique. Hip. The injury record of Matteo Berrettini reads like a medical textbook. Each one arrived at precisely the wrong time, costing him months and cutting short a comeback that seemed to be picking up steam.<\/span><\/p>\n

His own words<\/span><\/a> after the quarterfinal retirement told the full story: “In the middle of the first set, I started to feel something when I was serving, but I was competing. The match was very tough, and I just didn’t really think much of it. I just kept going and I tried to do my best. It was a really tough task today, but then the more that I was playing, the more I was serving, the more I was hitting forehands, the worse I was feeling.” He had to explain such a feeling far too many times. The body betraying him mid-competition, in real time, leaving him with the choice of pushing through and risking worse damage or stopping and going home. He later said simply: “I am fed up.” Two words that encapsulate years of frustration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Now<\/span><\/h4>\n

The question that follows Matteo Berrettini out of Roland Garros is an uncomfortable one: at 30 years old, with this injury record, what does the road ahead actually look like?<\/span><\/p>\n

Repeated muscular and joint injuries across multiple body parts are not the kind of thing that tends to get better with age. The body of a professional tennis player accumulates damage across a career, and the accelerating frequency of Berrettini’s setbacks suggests that the problem is systemic rather than isolated. Each retirement, each withdrawal, each period of rehab narrows the window of competitive opportunity. He is not ancient. But he is no longer young enough to absorb this kind of disruption without consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The immediate concern is Wimbledon. Berrettini himself admitted after the match that he does not yet know the extent of the hip injury, which is concerning given that the grass-court season began already. Wimbledon<\/a> is the tournament where Matteo Berrettini has been at his absolute best, the 2021 final, multiple deep runs, a game built for fast surfaces and short points. Missing it again, after missing so much already, would be another bitter chapter in a story that has far too many of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

Verdict<\/span><\/h>
\nThe saddest thing about the Matteo Berrettini story is the amount. “What could have been” is a phrase that haunts plenty of athletes, but it sits particularly heavy with him, because the talent was never in question. He reached a Grand Slam final. He was world number six. He had a serve and a forehand combination that belonged among the best in the game. Given health, just sustained, uninterrupted health, there is every reason to believe the trophies would have followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tried, in his post-match press conference, <\/span>to find the positive frame:<\/span><\/a> “A few weeks ago, it would have been crazy to think about me in the quarterfinals, so I will try to go home with a smile.” He is right. The comeback has been real, the form has been genuine, and this French Open run deserves to be remembered as evidence of a player who never stopped fighting for his career. But the smile is a hard one to sustain when the same story keeps ending the same way. Matteo Berrettini has given everything he has to this sport. The sport has not always returned the favour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matteo Berrettini was, for four rounds at Roland Garros, the story nobody had dared to script. He had returned to the French Open for the first time since 2021, was playing clean, confident tennis, and had reached the quarterfinals relatively unharmed. A semifinal was genuinely in reach. Then, in the middle of his quarterfinal against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5393,"featured_media":106135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,5,9],"tags":[43702,17610,1694,896],"class_list":["post-106128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","category-french-open","category-news","tag-2026-french-open","tag-matteo-arnaldi","tag-matteo-berrettini","tag-roland-garros"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106128"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106136,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106128\/revisions\/106136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}