Italy has lengthy valued some of life’s extra refined pleasures – meals, artwork, vogue, all set in opposition to the nation’s crumbling structure. Now, that cultural smorgasbord contains a new and maybe stunning providing: tennis.
Surprising, at the least, for these solely simply noticing the latest glut of tennis expertise to emerge from the southern European nation. In the males’s sport, Italy has 9 players ranked inside the prime 100 and 5 in the prime 50, together with the all-conquering Jannik Sinner – a four-time grand slam champion and the world No. 1 since June final yr.
Given the nation’s modest historical past in the sport, that is really a golden age for Italian tennis, one which has vaulted to even larger heights thanks to Sinner’s success on the courtroom and recognition off it.
“We are now particularly spoiled,” Ubaldo Scanagatta, a veteran journalist from Italy and founder of the Ubitennis web site, tells NCS Sports about his nation’s tennis increase. “Sinner is the top athlete, the top sportsman in Italy … He’s already an idol.”
Scanagatta has been concerned in tennis for many years. He has coated almost 180 grand slams, together with 51 Wimbledons and 50 French Opens, however by no means has he seen the sport as fashionable as it’s now.
Soccer has historically dominated the sporting panorama in Italy, and that appears unlikely to change anytime quickly. But failure to qualify for the final World Cup, coupled with a lack international superstars – “we don’t have (Lionel) Messi, (Cristiano) Ronaldo, (Kylian) Mbappé, or some of the players who play in the Premier League,” says Scanagatta – has created larger room for tennis to flourish.
“We never had the front page of (sports outlet) Gazzetta dello Sport showing tennis, and now tennis is every day in all papers, whatever Sinner does,” Scanagatta provides. “I had last year 70 million (site) visits, which for tennis is huge. I mean, when I started the blog first and then the website, I was happy when I was doing, I don’t know, 1,000 a day.”
Tennis’ explosion, nonetheless, is down to extra than simply Sinner, extra than simply soccer’s waning affect. The nationwide federation has for years been implementing plans to flip Italy into a powerhouse of the sport.
Among the most consequential adjustments was a transfer to assist personal groups and personal coaches, moderately than simply those that had been cherry-picked by the federation. As a consequence, the best sources grow to be accessible to the best players, regardless of the place they’re based mostly and by whom they’re coached.
That contains some of the most profitable players to emerge from Italy in latest instances: Sinner, world No. 10 Lorenzo Musetti, and former Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini.
“Now, the federation helps the players who do well,” says Scanagatta. “They can host them in the national tennis center if they want to practice. And if they need a physio, if they need the doctor, if they need the nutritionist – they find everything.”
One man who has witnessed first-hand Italy’s altering strategy to participant growth is main technique coach Craig O’Shannessy. A former member of Novak Djokovic’s teaching group, O’Shannessy has been working as a guide with the Italian federation since 2016, whereas additionally serving to Berrettini to climb inside the prime 10 in the world rankings.
“Italy is way ahead of the game,” he tells NCS Sports about the nation’s tennis drive. “They went all in, and in a very serious way … What they’ve done today was a vision 10 years ago.”
O’Shannessy is one of a number of abroad specialists employed by the federation to enhance the requirements of tennis teaching throughout the nation by way of symposiums and workshops. His focus has been on technique and patterns of play, utilizing information analytics to tailor-make coaching periods for every participant.
“My philosophy was very much about getting these young Italian kids to play and teach them while they’re playing, rather than just: ‘We’re doing drills today,’” says O’Shannessy.
“I wished to diminish that model of teaching and get them to play the place the coaches would see very simply what the strengths and weaknesses of these players are. Then you would do extra bespoke teaching to these players as an alternative of a cookie-cutter strategy.
“I get so many Italian coaches come up and go: ‘Thank you, Craig, you changed the way that I coach,’” he provides. “‘Before I would just feed balls and who knows who’s getting better. But now I have a purpose. You’ve given us analytics, you’ve given us the drills, you’ve given us benchmarks, and we get success,’ and everyone is just so much happier.”
As properly as a teaching revolution, up-and-coming Italian players additionally profit from quick access to tournaments.
A 2022 report from Tennis Europe famous that the nation hosts 148 worldwide competitions, accounting for eight p.c of occasions throughout the continent – second solely to Spain.
According to Scanagatta, there are additionally “at least four or five important junior tournaments” that are fashionable amongst followers – “spectators like to become a sort of talent scout,” he provides – however cheaper to run than top-level occasions.
More crucially, these tournaments are additionally instrumental in creating younger players. Italy had 249 professionally ranked male and feminine players by the finish of 2021, per Tennis Europe – second behind France’s 271.
“We are organizing more tennis than anybody else, and that helps a lot because the Italian players, they can play at home,” says Scanagatta. “They don’t have to spend a lot of money to go around the world, while (for instance) the South Americans, they have to leave South America in January, and they stay away for eight months or even more.”
Having so many tournaments permits organizers to give wild card entries to younger, homegrown players. That permits promising juniors to measure themselves in opposition to extra skilled players and, if profitable, accrue extra rankings factors. In flip, extra rating factors helps a participant achieve entry to extra prestigious tournaments.
This plethora of lower-level occasions compensates for Italy not internet hosting one of the 4 grand slams, which offer a large increase for a nation’s tennis financial system. And in the absence of a grand slam, Turin will host a fifth ATP Finals – the season-ending match in the males’s sport – later this yr, whereas the annual Italian Open in Rome is one of the world’s most iconic clay-court competitions.
As for broadcasting matches, all Italian households have free entry to TremendousTennis, a TV channel managed by the nationwide federation.
TremendousTennis has exclusive rights to the US Open in Italy up to 2027, plus restricted rights to Wimbledon. Davis Cup and chosen ATP and WTA Tour occasions are additionally aired on the community, making the sport simply viewable for followers at home.
Historically, success for Italian tennis has been sporadic. Before Sinner, Adriano Panatta was the solely man in the Open Era to win a grand slam, doing so at the 1976 French Open, whereas no participant had reached the prime of the rankings.
On the ladies’s facet, Francesca Schiavone became the first singles main winner at the 2010 French Open, adopted by Flavia Pennetta at the 2015 US Open.
Then, a number of years later, success got here thick and quick. Marco Cecchinato had a breakthrough quarterfinals victory in opposition to Djokovic at the 2018 French Open, earlier than Berrettini surged up the rankings and became the first Italian man to attain the quarterfinals of all 4 majors.
At this yr’s Wimbledon, 4 Italian males – eventual champion Sinner, Musetti, Lorenzo Sonego, and Flavio Cobolli – reached the fourth spherical for the first time, whereas Musetti has appeared in two grand slam semifinals over the previous 18 months.
Jasmine Paolini loved a meteoric and sudden rise final yr, reaching back-to-back singles finals at the French Open and Wimbledon and successful Olympic doubles gold alongside veteran Sara Errani.
Weeks later, Errani and Andrea Vavassori became the first Italians to win the mixed doubles title at the US Open, then claimed a second main title collectively at Roland Garros this yr and defended their US Open title in the tournament’s reimagined format. Errani has 9 grand slam titles throughout doubles codecs, together with alongside Paolini at this yr’s French Open.
Add in back-to-back Davis Cup titles and these can really be known as the glory days of Italian tennis. For Scanagatta, it’s a case of success breeding success, one participant inspiring a host of others.
“The psychological effect is the same that (Björn) Borg produced on (Mats) Wilander, (Stefan) Edberg, (Anders) Järryd, (Joakim) Nyström in the 80s when there were four, even five Swedish players in the top 10,” he says.
“It’s the same effect that Boris Becker and Steffi Graf made on German tennis, which produced afterwards Michael Stich, Tommy Haas, and (Nicolas) Kiefer. We have seen this happening in cycles in all countries.”
Sinner, of course, is the face of this exceptional period, his trophy haul solely doubtless to develop in the years to come. At the upcoming US Open, he has a probability to win a third grand slam title this yr, offered he isn’t hampered by the sickness which forced him to retire from the Cincinnati Open final on August 18.
Italian followers, enamored by the 24-year-old’s ferocious ball placing and softly-spoken demeanor, will probably be rooting for his profession to go from energy to energy. According to Scanagatta, not even a three-month doping ban earlier this yr – deemed to be unintended and linked to a physio making use of an over-the-counter spray – might tarnish his golden-boy picture.
“Nobody in Italy, having known him more than has been known abroad, thought that he was trying to cheat (in testing positive for anabolic steroid Clostebol),” says Scanagatta.
“Everyone likes him as a person because he’s showed always to be humble, attached to the family, to the right values. He doesn’t have a big head. He’s not arrogant.”
The query now, with Sinner’s best years earlier than him and solely Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in a position to problem his rival constantly, is for the way lengthy Italy can have players at the very prime of the sport.
For O’Shannessy, the approach wherein tennis has been organized and resourced in the nation ensures that it’s going to lengthy be in good well being, even when the prime players get injured or undergo dips in type. The wheels of movement at the moment are in place to experience out these blips.
“What Italy is doing is creating a machine – and I say this in the most polite, nice way – they’re creating a tennis machine that will make tennis explode when things are going well like they are now,” he says.
“Tennis is exploding in Italy, and it’ll additionally experience out the decrease factors nearly as good as you presumably can … Things are cyclical, issues will go up and down a little bit, so that you need to say, ‘Okay, how do we best counter that? How do we best take advantage of the good days and how do we best counter the bad days?’
“What the Italian federation is putting in place is here to stay. They’re more likely to do best in all of those scenarios than any other country I see.”