For a player who not so long ago was making a second week in a Grand Slam, including five straight quarterfinal appearances, limiting expectations and venturing into the unknown can feel like alien concepts.

Just two years ago, Matteo Berrettini was playing in the Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic. The Italian power hitter was a consistent item in the top 10 from October 2019 through June 2022.

Last year, after returning from a right hand injury that forced him out of the 2022 clay court swing, Berrettini enjoyed a stunning return to action, compiling nine straight wins on grass before the tournament by winning back-to-back titles. In Stuttgart and Queens only and then withdrew from Wimbledon due to a bout of COVID-19.

This year, Brittini’s fortunes took another hit when he suffered an oblique muscle injury at Monte Carlo and once again had to skip the clay season. He played his first match in two months on the grass in Stuttgart but walked off the court in tears after the opening 6-1 6-2 defeat to good friend and fellow Italian Lorenzo Sonego.

“Despite feeling fit and ready. Obviously I wasn’t,” the 27-year-old later admitted in an Instagram post.

Having been seeded in his last 13 majors, Berrettini has reached Wimbledon in a short spell – he’s played a total of 14 matches in 2023 – low in confidence, ranked outside the top 30 for the first time in four years, and unseeded at a Grand Slam for the first time. Once since the 2019 Australian Open.

There is a lot going around.

“I felt better about my career. I obviously don’t have any matches, in football they say ‘in my legs.’” Berrettini told a small group of reporters at the All England Club on Sunday, on the eve of Wimbledon 2023, but I think the will is greater than that.

“I don’t know what to expect actually. I know I’ve been working really hard, not just the last couple of weeks, but before that, before coming back and starting to play on the lawn.

“I know it wasn’t the perfect preparation for a slam and I don’t have crazy expectations about it. I have to deal with that.

“I’ve always been a player in the past three years when I entered the Grand Slam, I always thought how can I get to the final? How can I run a long distance? Now it’s changed a bit, not because I don’t believe in my tennis, but because it’s Important (to build) your body build and your physical condition I would say.”

Berrettini gave a little laugh when asked if he was ready for the top five tennis. His first test comes at Wimbledon on Tuesday and it’s a rematch with the man he has just inflicted a huge defeat on: Sonego.

All of the injury setbacks have understandably taken a toll on Brittini mentally, and while he knows it’s all part of being a professional athlete, he admits that staying on the sidelines in a sport as uncompromising as tennis is hard to accept.

“I think it’s a battle with yourself too. In a way I feel like everything that happens is part of a process, it’s part of life; everyone has their ups and downs,” he said.

“And you have to deal with that. But at the same time, this is a sport that makes you feel like you’re in a rush all the time. You have to come back, you lose points, you lose the standings, you don’t have time to say, ‘Okay, now I’m going to be in the best shape I can be and I’m going to come up behind .’

“Because I didn’t want to miss the grass season either; I didn’t want to miss the mud season in the first place. So you’re always kind of running all the time but at the same time you have to be wise. And obviously the pressure on the outside and the pressure on the inside, so that’s it.” Different, it’s something that, I would say, every day you learn a little bit more.”

Like any elite athlete, the former world No. 6 – now down to 38th in the rankings – puts a great deal of pressure on himself. This is what makes them strive for excellence, and what makes them achieve it more often.

But external pressure is a different beast. It can come from anywhere and everywhere, the source is sometimes surprising, and at other times completely predictable.

“Obviously I feel the pressure. I obviously feel like I came here and I’m not rated at the Slam, which is different. But at the same time I am, that’s what I do and every day I work hard to get back out there,” Berrettini explained.

“Every day I wake up in the morning, I’m like, ‘Okay, this is what’s happening now, we’re just fighting through this, and I’m doing the best I can.'” So that’s the really important thing for me.”

Asked to expand on where he feels the outside pressure is coming from, Brittini said: “From everywhere. When I first came here in 2018 there was probably one journalist here[at the press conference].

“Right now, for example, I completely shut down my social media, and I don’t read anything about it. I kind of live in a bubble because my brain never stops working. I’m like that. So even if it’s something I don’t really understand I know in the back of my mind that something is going to pop up, so it’s different.

“For example, four years ago, three years ago no one would stop me on the street in London and say, ‘Oh, this year you’re going to win Wimbledon.'” “This is something that is happening now.

“So everything has changed and you have to deal with that. Sometimes you can deal with it one way and sometimes another. But that’s where the pressure comes from.

“That’s a nice thing, because it means I did something great. But at the same time sometimes, especially when you don’t feel right, the confidence isn’t really there, you have to deal with that and it’s a little bit tougher.”