In 1977 Der Spiegel put the P38 on the cover over a plate of spaghetti to suggest – falsely – that this is Italy: terrorism and trattorias. By the end of 2025, the Hamburg weekly will probably choose the racket as its symbol Sinner and a street in Rome overrun with tourists. In fact, no one in the world experiences tennis events with the same intensity as we do. The fact that Gazetta dello Sport even dedicating three-quarters of the first page and the next seven pages to Sinner’s win over Zverev and the anticipation of Alcaraz vs. Musetti. The site made a similar choice tonight Republicwhich places live broadcasts from the Inalpi Arena on the homepage and below from Chisinau where Ringhio’s Italian team is on the pitch Gattuso. The only possible comparison is with cycling between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the economic boom, when Coppi, Bartali, Nencini, Baldini, Petrucci had more followers than the teams of Serie A. Historically, if the “arc-Italian” sport (copyright of Curzio Malaparte) for eighty years was the sport of wheels, pedals and Cime di Lavaredo as well as football, curve sud and Pizzul, now there is a third. The Italian team is even more of a protagonist in this ATP Finals, simply because Turin is their host. In the morning, the pair formed by Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori, who had already qualified for the semifinals, allowed themselves a very intense training session against the German Kevin Krawietz 3 Tim Puetz, who won only after a long difficult fight: 7-6 4-6 13-11. In the evening Lorenzo Musetti cherished the dream of beating Carlos Alcaraz for a while, but had to be content with putting him in serious trouble in the first set. “Lollo” aka “Muso” is old Italian. Beautiful and apparently mauditin fact he is a very gentle father who in a few days will have his second child with his partner Veronica Confalonieri. Prone to frequently questioning saints, he is kind and polite to everyone. An Apuan of mountain descent, if asked something, he does not answer with silence or clichés but tries to explain himself without reducing self-criticism. On Tuesday evening, beating Alex de Minaur in the final dive, he recorded a share of 9 percent and a following of 1 million 693 thousand viewers: figures that even Montalbano can no longer guarantee. When tonight at 20.42 he returned the first serve from the world number 1, he knew that only by winning would he secure a ticket to the semifinals. It’s not an unthinkable goal, there is a precedent: 2022, the final on the red fields of Hamburg, Musetti beats Alcaraz 6-4 6-7 6-4. At the start Lollo played as he knows how, he made few mistakes, he did not lose touch with the ATP leader, for three quarters of an hour he confirmed that the final was narrowly lost in Athens last Saturday against Novak Djokovic it helped him gain confidence. But then he surrendered in an endless tenth game, on serve, which saw him make his only irrecoverable error (6-4). In the second part, a decrease in self-confidence can be seen in body language which causes an increase in error rates. For Murcian, this was an invitation to close quickly, as he also did (6-1). The 52-year-old Italian who, after Sinner, is the most reckoned with in world tennis, prefers to wear light-colored clothes of very good cut and, now, also answers in English to questions asked of him by old friends such as Ubaldo Scanagatta, from Florence, and Vincenzo Martucci, a Milanese Roma, among the journalists who shared in 1998, on the sidelines of the Assago Forum, his drama in the fifth set, leading 6-5 and profitable: suddenly a tendon in the shoulder His right, which had been operated on a few months earlier, had fallen off. It was the first match of the Davis Cup final against Sweden, the opponent was named Magnus Norman. The kid — Andrea Gaudenzi, then a national hero in pain and heartbreak — has been president and CEO since 2020 of ATP, the company that manages the men’s professional circuit, excluding Slam and Davis. He is someone who retired from tennis in 2003 after reconciling a career as a Top 20 player and successful studies, until he graduated in Law in Bologna with a thesis on sponsorship contracts. Then came an MBA at the International University of Monaco, an entry into the business world with a preference for start-ups, a brilliant career as a manager highly skilled in handling television, digital and image rights. All experience that allows him to launch, in 2022, OneVision, ATP Media’s rights centralization, data exploitation and asset enhancement program. The idea is that data is a potential treasure, not a footnote. ATP tournaments are invited to think the same way. Andrea is the bridge between 90s tennis and the platform era, he knows how to combine sponsorship, business plans, metrics, fintech and politics. The main thing is fan satisfaction. This morning he explained to us in great detail his organization’s strategy and policies for the coming years. In English.
Because now tennis is a sport for the ancient Italians
