Italy, that school that has taken over the racket

I will talk about some detail that had surprised me at the last Roland Garros, days ago.

I am referring to the flood of Italian special envoys who, suddenly, flourished like mushrooms.

There were as many as we Spanish chroniclers usually are, accustomed as we are to governing in the Bois de Boulognebecause Spain has been adding titles in Paris for three decades: it has been like this since the great years of Sergi Bruguera and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, or since the times of Albert Costa, Ferrero, Corretja, Moyá, Ferrer, Muguruza, Alcaraz and, of course, this Nadal leaving and leaving us somewhat orphaned.

Read also

Sergio Heredia

Hyperactive and excited in those spring days, the Italian journalists surrounded Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian Tennis Federation, and asked him about Jannik Sinner or Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani, talents that have definitively exploded in 2024, elevating tennis in his country to previously unsuspected levels.

(…)

Five months later, many of those Italian chroniclers are now moving through the bowels of the Martín Carpena Palace in Malaga, men and women who wander, write, ask questions and pinch their skin because they cannot believe all that their tennis is giving them. . While we Spaniards lick our wounds, depressed by the fiasco of the men’s team, burdened by Rafael Nadal’s defeat against Botic van de Zandschulp, the Italians caress the glory, one more day and it will be theirs: this Sunday (4 p.m.) they will play the Davis Cup title against the Netherlands. If they prevail, they will join their success with that of the women’s team, champion of the Billie Jean King Cup, something never seen before in their country.

And its chroniclers, to celebrate it.

The truth is that the Australians have not given them things this Saturday either.

Thanasi Kokkinakis has been a bone against Matteo Berrettini (28), what agony of a match the Italian giant has raised: he needed three sets to come back and win 6-7 (6), 6-3 and 7-5, the prize for his success in the decisive moments, and particularly in the penultimate game of the match, an old dog that has put pressure on the aussiesnatching the service when it hurts the most and putting the score at 1-0 for the Italians.

Jannik Sinner (23), then, well, that was something else.

The Sinner of these days, imperious on fast surfaces, champion this year at the Australian Open and the US Open, first number 1 in the history of Italian tennis, plays in another category.

The efficiency of his game and the imperturbability of his spirit tell us this, a man of ice who never flinches, not even in these days when he keeps a judicial front open (he is being investigated for doping, in a process that has signs of leave him acquitted), not even when he bears the pressure of an entire country, of all those chroniclers who surround him wherever he appears.

Against Sinner, Alex de Minaur, another Next Gen trapped between Big Three that is beginning to fade (despite the fact that Novak Djokovic insists that he plans to move on: this same Saturday he announced that he has hired Andy Murray as coach for 2025) and the group of puppies led by Sinner, Alcaraz, Rune and Sebastian Korda, the new bosses of tennis.

Sinner has won 6-3 and 6-4, lulled by his magnificent consistency from the back of the court, a praying mantis that agitates the rival like a fan and makes him rise to the net and then destroys him with a passing shot.

One more step, now against the surprising Dutch of Paul Haarhuis (how effective Tallon Griekspoor, Botic van de Zandschulp and the doubles player Wesley Koolhof look), and the Italian school will have reissued the Davis title that it had already collected last year.

So it was the first in its history, let’s see how many it chains now.