Germany's Alexander Zverev crashed out of the Italian Open on Tuesday with a 7-5, 7-5 loss to Italian wild card Matteo Berrettini in the second round. "The match that I played was horrendous," said Zverev after the game which took 1hr 48min on the red clay of the Foro Italico. Zverev, the 2017 winner and runner-up in Rome last year to Novak Djokovic, has had a terrible start to the clay-court season with the French Open starting on May 26.

The 22-year-old lost his Madrid Open title last week, falling in the quarter-finals of both Madrid and Munich to Stefanos Tsitsipas and Cristian Garin respectively. The German has yet to win a trophy this season and stands 4-6 on clay this spring. Zverev had been seeded fourth in the final clay-court warm-up before Roland Garros, and was playing his first game having received a first-round bye. Last year, Zverev reached the final in Rome beating Berrettini there in their only previous meeting. But the 33rd-ranked Italian has been on form capturing his second ATP title on clay in Budapest last month, and reached the final in Munich. Zverev started with a break in the second set, but lost this advantage immediately.