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Bravo: Behind the rise of Sinner & an Italian tennis empire

Posted: Nov 05, 2024

It is summertime in Italy, and on this Sunday afternoon members at the Harbor Club Milano are divided on which tennis matches to watch. The one on the big screen features Italians Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori playing in the Terra Wortmann Open final. Or walk outside the clubhouse, and watch the qualifying matches of the ATP Challenger event.

These are the glory days for Italian tennis. On any given Sunday, you will likely see an Italian player in the hunt for a trophy on the ATP Tour and Challenger Tour.
“[Jannik] Sinner is the most popular sportsman in Italy,” says Massimo Giomba, a veteran journalist for Italy’s tennis news website Ubitennis. “All companies want to have his face to make advertising. And many people are interested about tennis now. It even happens on the metro you can hear normal people discussing the chances of Sinner or [Lorenzo] Musetti to win the tournament or to climb the rankings.”

<img alt=”Lorenzo Musetti” style=”width:100%;” src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/11/04/16/29/musetti-sardegnach-2024.jpg” />_{^{Lorenzo Musetti in action at the 2024 Sardegna Open. (Photo Credit: Mike Lawrence/ATP Tour)}}

Italians are not only climbing the PIF ATP Rankings, they are absolutely stacking it. With Sinner currently crowned the best player in the world, and Musetti on the rise at No. 17, Italy’s supply chain of players is well-balanced and flourishing. Like the national high-speed train, La Frecciarosa, Italy has steamrolled perennial powerhouse Spain off the tracks with the most players in the Top 100 of the PIF ATP Rankings by a non-grand slam nation.

“As I always said, we are lucky because we have junior tournaments, we have Future events, and then we have a lot of Challenger events in Italy,” says Jannik Sinner, who this year became the first Italian man to rise to World No. 1. “Which potentially could give a chance for the young players, having some wild cards, trying to understand what the level is until a certain point and talking about ranking-wise. Then after we have also big events. In Turin, we have the [Nitto] ATP Finals.”

If all roads lead to Rome, then they are most certainly paved with ATP Challengers. This year Italy will host 19 ATP Challengers. The return on investment for the Federation of Italian Tennis and Padel (FITP) has been a dependable production pipeline of players ranked inside the Top 500. In addition to keeping both players and coaches on task, Italy’s focus on staging more Challengers has better prepared its players to succeed on the ATP Tour. Right now, eight Italians are in the Top 75 of the PIF ATP Rankings.

<img src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/08/28/15/31/cagliari-challenger-wednesday.jpg” style=”width: 100%;” alt=”Lorenzo Musetti and Mariano Navone” />
_{^{The Sardegna Open is one of 19 Challenger Tour events hosted by Italy. (Photo Credit: Mike Lawrence/ATP Tour)}}

Every nation needs a leader, someone to light the way for the younger generation to follow. Argentina had Guillermo Vilas, Czechoslovakia had Jan Kodes, and Sweden had Bjorn Borg. For Italy, that man was Adriano Panatta. In 1976, Panatta won both the Italian Open and French Open.

Claudio Pistolesi was just nine years old when Panatta won the French Open. “To watch him [Panatta] play was both pleasure and pain,” recalls Pistolesi. “Some players play tennis from the textbook. Not so with Panatta, he performed magic.”

True that. Watch the videos and count all the Houdini-like escapes. Panatta played high-stakes tennis, saving match points with a Bond-like demeanour and derring-do escapes. Panatta would often employ the most dramatic tactics possible and in doing so gave Italy their first taste of cardio tennis.

<img src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/08/28/16/18/panatta-bravo-italy-2024.jpg” style=”width: 100%;” alt=”Adriano Panatta” />
_{^{Adriano Panatta defeated Harold Salomon in the 1976 French Open final. Photo: AFP/Getty Images)}}

“Yannick Noah may have inspired France,” claims Pistolesi, “but Adriano Panatta united Italy. And in doing so, he took tennis from an elite sport to a popular sport.”

With the barrier broken, a steady stream of Italians began to breach the walls of the Top 100: Pistolesi, Andrea Gaudenzi, Renzo Furlan, Gianluca Pozzi, Davide Sanguinetti, Cristiano Caratti, Filippo Volandri, Potito Starace, Simone Bolelli, Andreas Seppi, and Paolo Lorenzi.

And then came Fabio.

In Italy, Fabio Fognini is affectionately called ‘The Pope’. Meaning that Fognini can do whatever he wants and that people will always love him. Whether he plays with divine inspiration like his 2015 US Open third-round, come from behind five-set win over Rafael Nadal. Or swats balls with apparent indifference while saving five match points, and committing 12 foot faults against Albert Montanes at the 2010 French Open. Fabio Fognini is the proverbial box of chocolates that Italians just cannot get enough of.

<img src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/08/28/16/16/fognini-bravo-italy-wednesday.jpg” style=”width: 100%;” alt=”Fabio Fognini” />
_{^{Fognini has won nine titles on the ATP Tour and reached No. 9 in the PIF ATP Rankings. (Photo Credit: Mike Lawrence/ATP Tour)}}

Another pleasant surprise for Italian tennis was the shock ascent of Matteo Berrettini and Lorenzo Sonego. The fact that neither player was on anyone’s junior watchlist might have been a blessing in disguise. As well as a credit to the depth of developmental coaching in Italy.

“As juniors, both Matteo (Berrettini) and Lorenzo (Sonego) had the benefit of no expectations and unnecessary pressures,” believes Pistolesi. “Same like Sinner. Plus, they had some good fortunes to have been joined with exactly the right coach at the age of magic where kids can believe in dreams. And maybe even more important, these two special coaches believed in them.”

“I have been asked what made Matteo (Berrettini) special,” says former coach Vincenzo Santopadre. “And my answer is this. Almost every day he was showing me how he has this quality of listening. Not only hearing but listening deep inside of himself and committing these lessons to his memory. He could record everything that was taught to him that was important to getting better in tennis. And another reason is, unless you were with him every day, in good times and bad, you could not see this incredible desire to be great.”

<img alt=”Matteo Berrettini ” style=”width:100%;” src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/11/04/15/49/berrettini-wimbledon-2021-sunday.jpg” />
^{_{Matteo Berrettini reached the Wimbledon final in 2021. (Photo Credit: Corinne Dubreuil/ATP Tour)}}

The dream came true in the summer of 2021 at the Wimbledon Championships. That is when Matteo Berrettini marched onto Centre Court for the championship match against Novak Djokovic, becoming the first Italian men’s singles finalist in tournament history and first Italian Grand Slam men’s singles finalist since Panatta at 1976 Roland Garros.

It has long been an open secret that the best way to develop a nation’s tennis is through the three Cs: Coaches, Competition, and Courts. So, why don’t more countries do better? It can be a bit tricky. For starters, national associations often go corporate and employ a top-down management style that can damage more than develop.

In 2011, Donato Campagnoli, currently the consultant for the Department of Tactical-Technical of the FITP, was the only Italian coach at the ITF Worldwide Coaches Conference in Port Ghalib, Egypt. That would soon change. Thanks to an O.K.R action plan by the FITP, today Italian coaches boast the highest number of attendees in coaching education courses. Then there is Alberto Castellani, who has been a father figure to so many Italian coaches and players over the decades. Castellani is the president of the GPTCA, and regularly conducts over 40 coaching workshops a year from Rome to Rio.

According to Campagnoli the FITP created the Sistema Italia. “A project for the creation of a territorial ecosystem based on the cultural elevation of all the stakeholders involved in racquet sports,” states Campagnoli.

In more simple words, the FITP had to repair relationships. Step one, they (FITP) decided, was to stop separating the players from their coaches and cherry-picking the best players out of the local clubs.

8 Italians in Top 75 in the PIF ATP Rankings

Rank	Player	Age
1	Jannik Sinner	23
17	Lorenzo Musetti	22
32	Flavio Cobolli	22
35	Matteo Berrettini	28
38	Matteo Arnaldi	23
43	Luciano Darderi	22
51	Lorenzo Sonego	29
74	Fabio Fognini	37

“We made a collective decision at the FITP that the best place for the players to develop was at home with their families,” says Campagnoli. “That they should continue with the coaches who trained them, and remain at the clubs who have supported them from the first bounce of the ball.”

Now that everyone was working together, the FITP started spending money in all the right places. The FITP began an ambitious campaign of financially supporting all clubs that wanted to host professional tournaments. With courts and competitions in place, the FITP decided to befriend the coaches.

“Today, it is a new culture and approach by the Federation,” says Vincenzo Santopadre. “The FITP helps all the coaches with many forms of support from coaching education materials and workshops, access to analytics, physiotherapists, and fitness coaches.”

The FITP accepted that if they were going to lead a tennis revival, they would need to stop the bossing and start listening to their best talents. That done, the FITP was not content to sit back now that they had made friends and influenced others. The FITP’s masterstroke came with SuperTennis, a TV tennis channel. SuperTennis not only attracted lots of sponsors, but equally important, it broadcasted tennis to an audience hungry for all things tennis.

[ATP APP]

“SuperTennis has been huge for us,” claims Francesco De Laurentiis, Director of Tennis at the Sporting Club Sassuolo. “SuperTennis shows not only the big tournaments but also the Challengers, WTA, ITF Tours, and even some juniors! So people get to know players [ranked] from 500 to the Top 10. Therefore, they become known and popular so parents and junior players get closer to the tennis competition system and their interest in being part of it grows.”

Massimo Giomba believes that there is one more reason for success.

“Another factor is a sort of emulation game,” begins Giomba. “Sinner, Musetti, Luciano Darderi, Matteo Arnaldi, and Flavio Cobolli were born between 2001 and 2003. They have been playing against each other since Juniors. When one of them began to win in his professional matches, the other boys were thinking: “He won, why not me too?”. So now all these boys are in top 100. Others as Francesco Passaro, Mattia Bellucci, Matteo Gigante and Giulio Zeppieri are not so far behind.”

<img alt=”Flavio Cobolli” style=”width:100%;” src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/11/04/22/15/cobolli-training-2024″ />_{^{Flavio Cobolli, 22, began the year outside the Top 100 but cracked the Top 30 during a year in which he won 35 tour-level matches. Photo: Corinne Dubreuil/ATP Tour}}

Alfred Hitchcock said that good drama should, ‘always make the audience suffer as much as possible.’ Hitchcock might have been talking about tennis in Italy. Watch a tennis match in Italy, and you will be treated to the very best and the worst expressions in the Italian language. A mash-up of blessings, curses, and hand gestures that need no translation. For Italians, a good tennis match is not just a game but a theatre that demands more than just a ball passing over a net. Italians want to be entertained, and the more drama the better.

These days Italian tennis fans are getting more than just dramatic tennis matches to watch. Thanks to greater cooperation between the FITP and local clubs, players and coaches are free to deliver results that allow everybody to celebrate.

[NEWSLETTER FORM] <!–

Italian players inside Top 100/Top 500 vs. other countries

Country	Top 100 Ranking	Top 500 Ranking
France	10	45
United States	10	42
Australia	10	24
Italy	9	39

–>

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Ruud, De Minaur & Rublev complete 2024 Nitto ATP Finals field

Posted: Nov 05, 2024

With Novak Djokovic unable to compete due to injury, the field for the 2024 Nitto ATP Finals is now set. Casper Ruud, Alex de Minaur and Andrey Rublev have claimed the final three singles positions at the season finale, which will be played at the Inalpi Arena in Turin from 10-17 November.

The stars will join Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Taylor Fritz in the field.

Ruud returns to the year-end championships two years after claiming one of the best results of his career at the tournament. The Norwegian reached the title decider at the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals and will make his third overall appearance in the prestigious event.

De Minaur is set to debut at the Nitto ATP Finals and become the first Australian singles player to compete in the season finale since former No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings Lleyton Hewitt made the final in 2004.

Rublev will make his fifth consecutive appearance in the season finale. After participating in the event’s final year in London, he has qualified for all four editions held in Turin.

This year’s Nitto ATP Finals will award $15.25 million in prize money, with the singles champion having the chance to earn a record-breaking $4.8 million — the largest winner’s prize on the men’s tour — if he lifts the trophy without losing a match.

ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said: “Many congratulations to all the players who’ve earned the right to battle for the last title of the season at the 2024 Nitto ATP Finals. After an incredible year, the best in tennis are headed to Turin for what promises to be an unforgettable showdown. With the biggest winner’s prize purse on the men’s tour and one of the sport’s most prestigious titles on the line, this event is the ultimate stage to cap off a thrilling season.”

[ATP APP]

All eight players in the field have previously qualified for or competed in the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF. Sinner (2019) and Alcaraz (2021) are former champions of the event, while De Minaur twice made the final (2018-19) and Rublev also advanced to the championship match (2017). It is also the first year in which all eight singles players have been in their 20s since 2010.

Medvedev and Zverev are the two players in the field who have previously won the Nitto ATP Finals. Medvedev triumphed in the event’s final year in London (2020), and Zverev was victorious in 2018 and 2021.

Sinner, Alcaraz and Medvedev have reached No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings. Sinner has already clinched ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF honours, becoming the first Italian to achieve the feat.

The doubles field is also set. Marcelo Arevalo/Mate Pavic, Marcel Granollers/Horacio Zeballos, Wesley Koolhof/Nikola Mektic, Simone Bolelli/Andrea Vavassori, Max Purcell/Jordan Thompson, Rohan Bopanna/Matthew Ebden, Harri Heliovaara/Henry Patten and Kevin Krawietz/Tim Puetz will compete for the title at the Inalpi Arena.

DRAW CEREMONY
This will be the fourth edition of the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin. The draw is set to take place on Thursday 7 November at approximately 12:45 p.m. CET, following the pre-tournament press conference.

In recognition of the first No.1s in the PIF ATP Rankings, and the most successful doubles team in history, the singles groups for this year’s Nitto ATP Finals will be the Ilie Nastase Group and the John Newcombe Group, while the doubles groups will be the Bob Bryan Group and the Mike Bryan Group.

[NEWSLETTER FORM]

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