New ‘Master’ of world tennis after an impressive season, Jannik Sinner (23), winner of the ATP Masters on Sunday in Turin, defines himself as “someone who only tries to play tennis well.”
From the high mountains
If he had not fallen in love with tennis as a teenager, Jannik Sinner could have been a champion alpine skier. Born on August 16, 2021 in San Candido, in the Dolomites mountains, He slid down the first slopes at the age of three, in this area bordering Austria.
Sinner’s family lives in Sexten, in Alto Adige, where German is the main language. His parents, Hanspeter as a cook and Siglinde as a waitress, work in a hotel-restaurant located above the spectacular Fiscalina valley.
The best plays of Sinner-Fritz
Flashscore
Sports have always had an important place for this family, who adopted Mark, a Russian orphan, three years before Jannik was born. Hanspeter coached the local soccer team, a sport in which Jannik soon shone..
But it was not until he was 13 that tennis, until then a mere pastime for an energetic child, surpassed skiing. Jannik had just become the Italian giant slalom champion, but given how short the ski season is, this sport did not satisfy his thirst for competition.. He then developed a passion for the local hero, Andreas Seppi, who finished 2013 at number 18 in the ATP rankings, but above all for the Swiss Roger Federer.
Sinner’s statements after winning the ATP Finals
Flashscore
A regular promotion
Big for his age and already with more endurance, Sinner was quickly detected as a player with great potential, and collected national titles. But to succeed at the highest international level he had to leave his family to train more than 600 kilometers from his mountains in Bordighera, on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea..
Under the leadership of Riccardo Piatti, former coach of the Frenchman Richard Gasquet and the Canadian Milos Raonic, the teenager became world number one in the junior category, added his first ATP points in 2018 and the following year he surpassed the previous one to play his first ATP tournament. Grand Slam, the US Open.
Sinner, who was already very mature at that time, knew how far he wanted to go and how to achieve those goals.
“My dream is to become world number one and win Grand Slam titles. Without rushing”he shyly confessed in 2019 to local television after his defeat in the final of a Futures tournament, the third division of world tennis, in the Gardena Valley.
That year, at the age of 18, he won the NextGen in Milan, a tournament that brings together, like the Masters, the best players under 21 of the year, and settled in the top 100 with the status of “revelation of the year.”
Also in 2019, the general Italian public met this phenomenon after winning his first title, an ATP 250 tournament in Sofia. Already then he was seduced by his simplicity, his work ethic… and the carrots, which he eats during breaks between track changes. The birth of a star.
New peaks
At the beginning of 2022, Sinner made his way into the ATP top 20 but frustrated by his Grand Slam results he ended his collaboration with Piatti.
He reached a new level under the direction of Simone Vagnozzi and Australian Darren Cahill, hitting harder and harder and suffocating his opponents.
Since November 2023 it was unstoppable and began to collect new heights, as if he were a mountaineer: a first ATP Masters final in November 2023 and victory a week later in the Davis Cup, before winning his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January 2024, ending a 46-year drought for Italian tennis.
He reached his last peak in June, reaching number one in the world, something never before achieved by a player of his nationality.
In Italy the public adores him, and he is not reproached for his residence in Monaco or for feeling more comfortable with German than with Italian. Sponsors fight for him and provide him with 15 million euros of annual income.
This is how Sinner, very close to his family and not very present on social networks, has become el “son that everyone would like to have”as summarized by the president of the Italian Federation, Angelo Binaghi.
But the rise to the top could make the fall harder, with a doping case reopened after being acquitted by tennis institutions that could keep him off the courts for several months and even years.
