Two sets up, no way through: Lorenzo Musetti joins rare major retirement list | ATP Tour

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Two sets up, no way through: Musetti joins rare major retirement list

View the players who have retired after taking the first two sets

January 28, 2026

When Lorenzo Musetti walked to the net on Tuesday night at the Australian Open, the scoreboard told a story that tennis almost never sees.

Two sets to love up against Novak Djokovic, the Italian was forced to retire in their quarter-final, joining one of the sport’s most painful and unusual footnotes: players who have led by two sets at a Grand Slam and never finished the match.

Remarkably, this is not the first time Musetti has found himself on the wrong side of this rare statistic and against the same opponent. At Roland Garros in 2021, Musetti stunned the tennis world by taking the opening two sets from Djokovic in the fourth round. Physical struggles followed, Djokovic surged back, and Musetti eventually retired in the fifth set. Five years later, on a different surface, history repeated itself.

Across the entire Open Era (since 1968), there have been only a handful of instances where a player has retired from a major match despite holding a two-set advantage. Grigor Dimitrov was the most recent example before Musetti at last year’s Wimbledon, where he retired due to a pectoral injury when leading Jannik Sinner 6-3, 7-5, 2-2.

Research contribution from Jon Jeraj