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Musetti, Sinner, Berrettini... Italian tennis develops its dolce vita and dreams of the Davis Cup

2022-09-13T12:27:06.377Z


DECRYPTION - Italy wants to use the Davis Cup (September 14 - November 27) to continue its development and establish itself permanently at the top of world tennis.


In April 2021, Italian tennis had managed to place ten players in the Top 100 ATP: Matteo Berrettini, Fabio Fognini, Jannik Sinner, Lorenzo Sonego, Stefano Travaglia, Salvatore Caruso, Lorenzo Musetti, Gianluca Mager, Marco Cecchinato and Andreas Seppi.

If this number has dropped to five as of August 2022, this success shows that Italy has become a real tennis school, omnipresent in the landscape of this sport.

To discover

  • Davis Cup: Schedule and results

Read alsoWhy Italian tennis is having a big bang

A sudden explosion

After the glorious 70s carried by Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti and Paolo Bertolucci who won the Davis Cup in 1976 and played three other finals, ensuring a perfect succession to the duo Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola, Italy had subsequently completely disappeared international tennis radars, to the point of being relegated to group 2 in 2004.

With the success of Francesca Schiavone at Roland-Garros in 2010 and the fine careers of Sara Errani, notably in doubles with Roberta Vinci, Italy has risen from its ashes over the past ten years.

A finding well helped by the feat of Marco Cecchinato against Novak Djokovic on the French Grand Slam in 2018 then the victory of Berrettini in Gstaad.

“At the Masters 1000 of Monte-Carlo in 2019 with the victory of Fabio Fognini and the explosion of Lorenzo Sonego who beat Khachanov in the round of 16, this domino effect began to be created which we continue to observe today with Jannik Sinner, Lorenzo Musetti and the others from the Next Gen such as Cobolli, Zeppieri, Nardi and Arnaldi who obtain excellent results and collect precocity records”

explains Arianna Nardi, journalist at

La

Gazzetta dello Sport.

Sharing the same positive environment and drawing inspiration from each other has contributed a lot to this boom in the Italianization of the circuit.

With an excellent technical base and the high skills of the Italian coaches, the Nazionale continues to explode by basing its philosophy on the close and friendly ties maintained between each Italian player on the circuit.

Read alsoTennis: Lorenzo Musetti wins his first title by beating Carlos Alcaraz in Hamburg

Daily monitoring of the Federation

Today, the number of licensees in Italy has tripled in three years to reach 500,000. An evolution that the president of the Federation Angelo Binaghi does not owe exclusively to sporting success.

“The boys are all followed individually by Italian coaches: Jannik Sinner, Matteo Berrettini and Lorenzo Musetti are based in Monte-Carlo, they train there with their teams when they are not on the circuit.

The Federation with Filippo Volandi, Umberto Rianna and other members of the Nazionale, is present during the tournaments.

It gives more and more opportunities to young people to grow up and show themselves to young people,”

says the young journalist.

The Italian Olympic preparation center is based in Tirrenia.

Located in the province of Pisa on the Tyrrhenian side, it collaborates with the Institute of Sports Medicine and with the Institute of Sports Sciences.

Just one kilometer from the sea, the CPO extends in a green oasis of 43 hectares, part of the famous natural park of San Rossore.

The context is ideal for high-level technical and physical preparation for athletes.

"With the base in Tirrenia, where a large part of the new generation meets several times a year, we have an important laboratory of samples which are constantly guided and observed as they grow",

continues the Italian journalist

.

The young Flavio Cobolli in Rome last May.

Zuma / Panorama

SuperTennis a unique ingredient

Launched at the end of 2008 to correct the lack of visibility of tennis in Italy, it broadcasts for free the biggest events of the WTA circuit, dozens of ATP tournaments but also the latest editions of the Davis Cup or the NextGeneration ATP Finals, the tournament of the hopes of the men's tennis organized in Milan.

This initiative makes it possible to establish a positive climate around Italian tennis around which the main protagonists gather (players, coaches, agents, sponsors, clubs, etc.)

“Having a channel that broadcasts a lot of tennis free-to-air helps raise awareness and bring people closer to the sport, especially at such a great time for our players.

A good synergy has been created between Supertennis and Sky, resulting in an agreement to extend the exchange of rights for the retransmission of matches.

Pay TV is investing more and more in tennis, a very important signal given that football has always been the main object of attention here in Italy”,

points out Arianna Nardi, also a presenter at SuperTennis.

“The rise of tennis on the court goes hand in hand with that of television and even the newspapers reserve an important place for tennis.

Even the Gazzetta dello Sport has created a dedicated channel which, for the Wimbledon final - with the written live of Berrettini's match - has reached 1 million unique contacts”,

concludes Nardi on this subject

.

The Davis Cup to launch the machine

For this edition of the Davis Cup, which presents a brand new format, coach Filippo Volandri has called on Jannik Sinner, Matteo Berrettini, Fabio Fognini, Simone Bolelli and Lorenzo Musetti to play the matches against Croatia, Sweden and Argentina .

A program to pocket one of the two qualifying tickets to the quarter-finals.

This group A organized in Bologna, Italy, represents a real opportunity for this beautiful transalpine generation in search of success.

“I want to win the Davis Cup”

, Lorenzo Musetti has in any case announced the color of Italian goals.

First match of the Nazionale this Wednesday against Croatia.

Source: lefigaro

All sports articles on 2022-09-13

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