Jannik Sinner’s star shines. The first Italian world number 1 and eighth player in the era of computerized rankings to win the first tournament played as number 1, at Wimbledon he will also be the first Italian to play a Slam as the number 1 seed.
But on the eve of the Championships what really stands out in men’s tennis is the quantity of Italian players in the Top 100. The Reuters press agency deals with it in a long article that analyzes the scenario and tries to explain the factors that made this change possible step compared to the recent past.
“When we took over Italian tennis, we were on the verge of bankruptcy, and now we can say that we are on top of the world” said Angelo Binaghi, president of the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, to Reuters who dedicated a long article to the rebirth of Italian men’s tennis.
In this week’s ATP rankings, Italy has nine players in the top 100, and seven in the top 60, just like the United States, one of the great powers of world tennis. Of the nine Italians currently in the Top 100, six are aged between 20 and 23. The future appears decidedly rosy, therefore. Yet in 2010 Italy had no players in the Top 50 in the ATP rankings and only had three in the Top 100.
“It’s all happening much faster than we would have imagined. Nations that in the past were much more developed than us, like France, have come several times to study what we are doing,” Binaghi said.
The president of FITP, writes Reuters, has focused on the decentralization of the technical sector, with peripheral centers and increasingly close relationships with private teams. This new system, said Michelangelo Dell’Edera, president of the “Roberto Lombardi” Training Institute, has created greater cohesion between the coaches, the federation, the clubs, the players and their families. “It was extraordinary, and in some ways a little unusual for us Italians,” Dell’Edera told Reuters.
The change has affected all levels. The Federation has also supported the growth of players through wild cards in the many ITF and Challenger tournaments organized in Italy. Furthermore, as we have said, if you look at the ATP and WTA calendars we are one of only five nations that organize events on all surfaces. In the last eight years, Filippo Volandri, captain of the national Davis Cup team and technical director of FITP, underlined to Reuters, “we have used these wild cards as an accelerator of experience”.
The work brought results, and the results rekindled the passion. The number of members, just over 120 thousand in 2001, has reached 820 thousand in 2023. “We are living in an incredible moment because the successes of Jannik Sinner, of the other boys of the national team and of our girls also drag on the great events that are a showcase, they make passion grow and membership increases – said Binaghi last April in his speech at San Siro, in Milan, for a one-day event organized by Foglio Sportivo -. In 2024 the trend is increasing by 150 thousand this year so we aim to exceed one million members”.
Driven by the successes of Sinner and the national team in the Davis Cup, tennis is now the second most popular sport in Italy after football, as emerged from a Demos survey to which Ilvio Diamanti dedicated an article in Repubblica in April.
2024-06-27 15:56:27
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