The astonishingly fast rise of a top Italian sportsman
_(52036393751).jpg "Jannik Sinner has enjoyed a rapid rise to the top of the ATP rankings") |
| Jannik Sinner has enjoyed a rapid rise to the top of the ATP rankings |
Sinner is currently ranked as the World No 1 in Singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), having won a Grand Slam title at the 2024 Australian Open. He also led the Italian team to victory in the Davis Cup competition in 2023, the first time Italy had won the Davis Cup since 1976.
He grew up in Sexten - Sesto in Italian - in the Dolomites, where his father worked as a chef and his mother as a waitress in a ski lodge, in a part of the predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol province. Sinner was a competitive skier between the ages of seven and 12.
But he also had a talent for tennis and decided to focus on that sport exclusively from the age of 13. He went to train with the Italian coach Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera in Liguria, where he quickly improved his Italian.
Sinner had limited success as a junior, but he began playing on the ITF Men’s Tour in 2018. Because of his low ranking he could compete in Challenger events only if he was given wild cards, but in 2019 he won his first ATP Challenger event in Bergamo at the age of 17 and a half.
He was the first person born in 2001 to reach a Challenger final and the youngest Italian to win a Challenger final in history.
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| Sinner holds up the trophy after winning the 2024 Australian Open, his first Grand Slam |
He won a second ATP Challenger title in Lexington, becoming one of just 11 players aged 17 to win multiple Challenger titles.
Later that year he qualified for his first Grand Slam main draw at the US Open but lost his debut match to Stan Wawrinka.
Sinner qualified for the 2019 NextGen ATP finals and, despite being the lowest seed, he beat the top seed, Alex de Minaur, to win the title.
He reached the second round of the Australian Open and the third round of the Rome Masters in 2020. He became the youngest quarter finalist at the French Open, since Novak Djokovic in 2006, and he finished 2020 as the world No 37.
The following year, he reached his first ATP Masters final at the Miami Open, finishing runner up in the tournament to Hubert Hurkacz.
Sinner won his first ATP title in Washington, and entered the top 15 for the first time in August 2021. He reached the fourth round of the US Open that year before losing to Alexander Zverev.
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| Jannik Sinner is often cheered on by a group of supporters who call themselves the 'Carota Boys' |
Sinner ended the year by going ahead of his fellow countryman Matteo Berretini in the rankings.
In 2023, he reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon, before losing to Djokovic in straight sets, but beat the then World No 1 and defending champion Djokovic at the 2024 Australian Open, becoming the first Italian man to reach the final at this event.
He was cheered on in Melbourne by group of fans known as the 'Carota Boys', who watch his matches dressed in carrot costumes - inspired partly by his red hair and partly by his practice earlier in his career of munching a raw carrot on court during changeovers.
Sinner became World No 1 in June this year and won the Halle Open as the top player in the world. At Wimbledon, he lost to Daniil Medvedev in a five-set quarter-final after having a medical timeout because of illness. Sadly, he was unable to represent Italy at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris because he had tonsillitis.
Jannik Sinner currently lives in Monte Carlo in Monaco. To this date he has won 14 singles titles on the ATP Tour.
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| Bolzano's duomo, the Cattedrale Maria Himmelfahrt, was consecrated in 1180 and built in Romanesque style |
The South Tyrol area of what is now northern Italy is also known as Südtirol in Germany and Alto Adige in Italian. Together with the autonomous province of Trento, South Tyrol forms the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It has a population of just over half a million people, of whom around 63 per cent speak German as their first language, although the provincial capital, Bolzano, has an Italian-speaking majority. Sinner's home village of Innichen/San Candido and the neighbouring Sexten/Sesto are slightly more than 100km (62 miles) east of Bolzano by road and just a few kilometres from the border with Austria. Almost half the region's population live in Bolzano and the surrounding areas. One of the largest urban areas in the Alpine region, it has a mediaeval city centre famous for its wooden market stalls, selling among other things Alpine cheeses, hams and bread. Places of interest include the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
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| The resort town of Bordighera in Liguria was the subject of a landscape painting by Monet in 1884 |
Bordighera, where Jannik Sinner moved at the age of 13 to further his ambitions in tennis, is a small, picturesque town on Italy’s Riviera, just 20km (12 miles) from Italy’s western border with France. It is famous for its flower industry and was a popular holiday destination for the English during Queen Victoria’s reign. Being situated where the Maritime Alps meet the sea, it enjoys the benefit of a climate that invariably produces mild winters. It was the first town in Europe to grow date palms. Its seafront road, the Lungomare Argentina - named in honour of a visit to the town by Evita Peron in 1947 - is 2.3km (1.4 miles) long and is said to be the longest promenade on the Italian Riviera. Queen Margherita of Savoy - wife of Umberto I - had a winter palace, Villa Margherita, in the town. Tourism remains a huge part of Bordighera's economy but it tends to be less crowded and less expensive than some of the higher-profile Riviera resorts.
Also on this day:
1650: The birth of globe maker Vincenzo Coronelli
2005: The death of cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli
2006: The death of renowned art restorer Umberto Baldini