Jannik Sinner came up with a comprehensive win against Casper Ruud to make it to the Italian Open semifinal. The local lad registered a 6-0, 6-1 win against the Norwegian, who recently won the Madrid Open.

Sinner was able to dominate from the get-go and gave no chance to the opponent. The 23-year-old wrapped up the game in 64 minutes and this was his fourth win against Ruud on the tour.

“It’s tough to say,” said Sinner, when asked how close to ‘perfection’ his performance had been. “I was feeling great on the court today. I think we all saw that. My goal was to try to understand where my level is at this tournament. It raised day by day, so I’m very happy about that. The result doesn’t really matter, but I felt today was a very positive sign for me.

“Everything can change in one day. It’s not that one performance can tell everything about my shape now, but I’m very happy. I think today everything worked very well. I was serving well, also returning well, and moving great on the court. I’m very happy about that and now let’s see what’s coming in the semis.”

Speaking on his impressive record against Ruud, Sinner said he tried to replicate the things he was doing right in the past.

“We had a head-to-head, I maybe looked at that,” said Sinner, when asked to explain how he so emphatically improved to 4-0 in his Lexus ATP Head2Head series with Ruud. “Every one of us has one or two opponents where we struggle a little bit more. I tried to replicate what I did in the past today on a different surface. I was hitting the ball very well. These conditions, playing in the night against Casper is a little bit better from my point of view, because he cannot make the ball bounce as much.”

Sinner will face Tommy Paul on Saturday.