Flavio Cobolli walked to his chair on Court Philippe-Chatrier one set from a place he had never held. He held it. The 24-year-old Italian reached his first Grand Slam semi-final at Roland Garros, beating fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in a quarter-final that ran three hours and twenty-three minutes.
The match began in the wind and finished under the roof, light rain drizzling outside. Those were two different contests. Auger-Aliassime read the blustery opening set better, took it, and opened a 3-1 lead in the second as the roof closed. Then Cobolli found his feet. He cut the unforced errors that had troubled him and reeled off five of the next six games to level the match. His footwork let him dictate with the forehand, and he held firm on the pressure points, winning ten of fourteen 30/30 exchanges across the afternoon. A break in the third stood up, even against a scrambling, diving Auger-Aliassime, and Cobolli served out the biggest moment of his career without the wobble that had shadowed earlier rounds.
The chance of his life
"I think we played two different matches today. The first set was incredibly windy and tough to play," Cobolli told reporters afterwards. "I went to the toilet to think a bit and change something." He described a private resolve on the changeovers.
I said to myself to fight as I felt this would be the chance of my life and I have to give everything in my matches and today I did it.
A step in the trajectory
The result places Cobolli among the game's top order. The win, his third in three meetings with Auger-Aliassime, moved him up four spots to No. 10 in the live rankings and secured his Top 10 debut. It was also the first time he had beaten a Top 10 opponent at a major, having lost his previous six such matches. The path was not without strain: after dropping no sets in his first three matches, he needed a fourth-set tie-break to pass American Zachary Svajda in the round before. The three-time tour-level champion looked steadier here.
His run guarantees an Italian in the final. It marks only the third time two Italians have reached the semi-finals at a major, after Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola at Roland Garros in 1960 and Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti in Paris last year. Cobolli, once a boy in AS Roma's youth football setup, will meet a compatriot next.
The arena changed. The temperament, it seems, did not.
