Volèe, trophies and rebel tuft, the 70 years of Panatta

At the Parioli club was for all "Ascenzietto", the son of Ascenzio the custodian. Yet, despite a childhood lived on the tennis courts and in the midst of the band of "bad boys" of Nicola Pietrangeli and Bitti Bergamo, Adriano Panatta's encounter with the sport that would mark his life took place almost by chance. "I wanted to swim, but the courses were already closed. 'I enrolled you in tennis' my father said to me" he says in his autobiography 'More straight than backwards'.
    The talent of the future champion, who crosses the 70-year mark on Thursday, thus blossomed in the shadow of the capital's jet set. Over time Panatta would have become the inventor of that seventies tennis that, thanks to his solar and Mediterranean game - a soft touch and the preference for the wishes opposed to methodical and Nordic tennis by another star like Bjorn Borg - would have contributed the popularity of tennis in Italy, a sport that until then was considered a pastime for the few.
    In the palmares of the greatest Italian player of the open era there are 10 tournaments on the major circuit in singles and 18 in doubles. The only tricolor Davis Cup bears his signature, against Chile, in 1976, the year in which he triumphed also in Rome and Paris, reaching the fourth place in the world ranking, his best placement. In Santiago Panatta he won both singles and doubles, paired with Paolo Bertolucci. Both wore red shirts in protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It was the color of the handkerchiefs waved by women who went down to the square in search of relatives.
    "I met him in a tournament in Cesenatico, I was 11 and he was 12 - says Bertolucci - and I was not very nice, with his Roman way of doing ... to me who came from a village like Forte dei Marmi. Years afterwards we found ourselves at the federal center of Formia where we ended up in the room together. And there is love.
    How many encounters ... Me on the right, he on the left. I the low one, he the high one. We also had a fight. we didn't talk to each other for two weeks, not even in the hotel. But I knew it would be he who gave in and so it was. Because Adriano has a big heart, he's a generous man. But he can also be a nuisance. "
    After his competitive career in 1983, Panatta was a non-captain of the Italian Davis Cup team from 1984 to 1997, leading him to the semifinals in 1996 and 1997.
    The rebel tuft was very popular with women. "The figure of the unrepentant playboy is a fairy tale that they have sewn on me" he repeats. But sporting career and private life are two ways that run side by side. Loredana Bertè, Novella Calligaris, Mita Medici, Serena Grandi, Clarissa Burt.
    Real companions or gravure, are some of the names associated with Panatta over the years. Tennis in glamor sauce. How many trophies and broken hearts in the 70 years of the great Hadrian.