French Open semi final preview: Flavio Cobolli vs Matteo Arnaldi

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This is what everyone's talking about.

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And the slam.

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No do-overs, no second chances, no more Mr. Nice Guy. This is winner take all.
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Ready? Play.

**John Silk** (1:38)
Well, we got an Italian in the semi-final. Just like all of us thought was gonna happen. It is not any of the Italians that we thought were going to be there. I don't know, maybe Flavio Cobolli was a pick for some people. That second quarter of the draw was a little bit open, but I'm not sure anyone saw Matteo Arnaldi coming through making his first Grand Slam semi-final appearance. It's been a bit of a crazy tournament, Amanda.
Like, how do you see, we'll start with Arnaldi, how do you see his run so far? It's been just an absolutely insane draw for him and an insane tournament for him.

**Amanda** (2:16)
Yeah. I mean, it's just been match after match of him coming through against pretty tough odds, I mean, especially his fourth round match. He had to come back from a double breakdown in the fourth set against Francis Tiafoe. And yeah, I mean, it's just been some incredible tens from him. Obviously an unfortunate end to his quarterfinal match as Matteo Berrettini had to retire, but he looked great in that match. He's looked great in every match. And he, even when it seems like he won't find a way, he does. So yeah, definitely, even though he's not the favorite in this match, there's, he's shown that there's always a path for him.

**John Silk** (2:58)
Yeah, I think, well, I'm curious, like what do you see as his path against Cobolli? We'll get to predictions in a little bit, but certainly he's the underdog here. What do you think he needs to do in order to make this competitive one and then give himself a chance of winning?

**Amanda** (3:15)
I think, I mean, first of all, he needs to serve very well because Cobolli is a great returner, especially on clay. So if he's serving well, getting a couple of free points, which isn't always typical for him, but if he can get that, that could be huge if the margins are thin. And then I think extending rallies literally as long as he physically can because Cobolli will probably make an error first if they're locked in a really long rally.

**John Silk** (3:41)
I think that is probably the path he's going to have to take. It is the path that he took for nearly two sets against Baratini today. And he and Arnaldi and Cobolli played similar styles of tennis. So I think it's going to be really tough because it's really the first time that Arnaldi has had to face a mirror image of himself in a way. A lot of his matches up to this point in the tournament have been against players who play a very different style than him on clay.
And where extending points isn't necessarily in their best interest. So I do think that will be interesting. Let's jump over to Cobolli who, I mean, he's had a, he's played a couple of higher ranked players in this tournament. Obviously a straight set win against Lerner Trigian in the third round. And then played Felix Oje Alguacim today in the quarterfinals. Took that in four sets. I was impressed with how he played the final three sets.
I think after getting broken very late in set number one, we ended up losing that one. Would have been easy to like maybe collapse a little bit mentally, but he stayed quite strong. How have you been seeing his runs so far?