Jasmine Paolini - tennis star

Breakthrough year saw Tuscan soar in rankings

Jasmine Paolini reached two Grand Slam
finals during an exceptional 2024 season

The tennis player Jasmine Paolini, whose outstanding 2024 season saw her match the highest world singles ranking attained by any Italian in the history of women’s tennis, was born on this day in 1996 in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, an historic town around 45km (28 miles) north of the city of Lucca.

Having reached two Grand Slam finals, won her second career WTA 1000 title and helped the Italian squad become Billie Jean King Cup champions in the course of the year, Paolini climbed to No 4 in the world, equalling the achievement of the 2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone.

A popular player with fans for her sunny attitude on court, she also won a gold medal in doubles at the 2024 Paris Olympics, partnering Italy’s all-time leading women’s doubles player, Sara Errani.

Having finished runner-up to world No 1 Iga Swiatek in the 2024 French Open final and to the Czech player Barbora Krejcikova on the Wimbledon grass five weeks later, Paolini’s next target is to win her first Grand Slam title.

Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta, who was US Open champion in 2015, are the only Italian women so far to win the singles title at one of tennis’s four Grand Slams - the Australian, French and US Opens, and the Wimbledon Championships.

Paolini is coached by the 54-year-old former Italian singles player Renzo Furlan, who reached 19 in the world during his own playing career.

Although only 5ft 4ins (1.63m) tall, which means she cannot match the serving qualities of taller opponents - current world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka, for example, is 6ft (1.83m) - Paolini makes up for her lack of height with powerful groundstrokes and her speed around the court, which she attributes to her Ghanaian heritage on her mother’s side.

Paolini's strength in rallies helps
compensate for her small stature

Paolini’s father, Ugo, is Italian; her mother, Jacqueline, is Polish with a Ghanaian father. The couple met when Ugo was running a bar in Bagna di Lucca and Jacqueline, who grew up in Lodz, arrived in Italy to work as a waitress. They were married within a year.

Their daughter grew up in Bagna di Lucca, where her uncle, Adriano Paolini, introduced her to tennis at the Mirafiume club in the town at the age of five. She worked under the guidance of Marco Picchi and Ivano Pieri, subsequently training at Vicopelago in Lucca, Forte dei Marmi and, from the age of 15, with her current coach Renzo Furlan, who was working for the Italian Tennis Federation at Tirrenia, just outside Pisa.

After winning one junior title at the age of 17 in 2013, Paolini had to wait another four years to make her WTA singles tournament debut at the Swedish Open in 2017. Good results in 2019 propelled her to 94th in the world going into the 2020 season. 

In 2021, she he celebrated her first WTA singles title at the Slovenia Open and entered the main draw of all four Grand Slams for the first time.

Following the 2022 Australian Open, Paolini reached the WTA top 50 for the first time, having achieved her first win over a top-10 player when she knocked out Sabalenka, the then world No 3, at Indian Wells. By October 2023 she had climbed to a career high 31, displacing Elisabetta Cocciaretto as Italian No 1.

Then came substantial progress in 2024, when she played no fewer than 110 singles matches, the programme devised with Furlan providing few breaks but a chance to build real momentum. Beginning with a first fourth-round appearance at the Australian Open in January, the deepest she had been in a Grand Slam to that date, she added a doubles title at the Linz Open in February alongside Errani and a first WTA 1000 title In Dubai, avenging her Australian Open defeat by beating Anna Kalinskaya in the final, taking her to 15 in the world rankings. 

At the French Open, seeded 12th, she overcame Elena Rybakina in the quarter-finals with her first top-five win at a major, then defeated Russia’s Mirra Andreeva in the semi-finals before losing to Swiatek in the final.

Sara Errani partnered Paolini to
doubles gold at the Olympics

She reached the Wimbledon final despite having never previously survived round one at the London venue. Seeded No 7, she knocked out Madison Keys and Emma Navarro in the second week before a semi-final marathon win over Donna Vekić that set a tournament record by lasting two hours and 51 minutes as Paolini came back to triumph from a set down.

The first Italian woman to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals in the open era, she ultimately lost to Krejcikova in three sets.

She and 37-year-old Errani then won gold for Italy at the Olympics, defeating the ‘neutral’ Russian pair of Andreeva and Diana Shnaider in the final, before a singles quarter-final at the Wuhan Open in October allowed her to match Schiavone’s achievement by becoming world No 4. 

Her whirlwind schedule in 2024 also saw Paolini collect more than $5 million in prize money, almost tripling her career earnings.

Errani, with whom Paolini won doubles titles in Rome and China in 2024, also played a key role in the Billie Jean King Cup as the pair won decisive doubles victories against Japan and Poland, before Paolini’s defeat of Rebecca Sramkova in the final against Slovenia gave Italy their first title triumph in the former Federation Cup for 11 years.

The Rocca Ariostesca, once home of the poet
Ludovico Ariosto, attracts visitors to Castelnuovo

Travel tip:

Castelnuovo di Garfagna, Jasmine Paolini’s birthplace, nestles in a valley flanked by the foothills of the Apuan Alps and the Apennines. A town of around 6,000 inhabitants, it can trace its history back to the eighth century, after which its strategic position saw it grow quickly into an important town with defensive walls and castles, which have been enlarged and improved over time. Today, the defensive walls contain the oldest parts of the town, characterised by winding streets and small artisan shops. The more modern part of the town is outside the walls. It developed as a market town from the 13th century, first under the control of Castruccio Castracani, then by the Estensi family of Ferrara, who made the town a seat of Vicarship and built the town’s Duomo - the Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo. Power transferred to Urbino and then Florence for brief periods in the 16th century before its return to the House of Este. Today, it remains a bustling town with direct road and rail links to Lucca, Pisa, Florence and Viareggio. As well as the Duomo, which has a Renaissance facade and a Baroque interior, the Rocca Ariostesca is an important historical building. The castle takes its name from the Italian poet, Ludovico Ariosto, who lived there between 1522 and 1525 when he was governor of the Garfagnana for the House of Este. Just outside the town, the Fortezza di Monte Alfonso, surrounded by huge protective walls, offers stunning views. 

The Ponte della Maddalena in Bagni di Lucca has
been standing since the late 12th century

Travel tip:

Bagni di Lucca, where Paolini grew up, is actually a collection of 27 villages in the Lima Valley in northern Tuscany, situated 28km (17 miles), famous largely for the hot springs that have attracted visitors to the area since Etruscan and Roman times. The area enjoyed its most prosperous time during French occupation in the 19th century, when the town became the summer residence of the court of Napoleon and his sister, Elisa Baciocchi. A casino was built, where gambling was part of social nightlife. Bagni di Lucca was also popular with English travellers, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert Browning, who spent their summers there during their time in Italy in the 1840s and 1850s.  Other illustrious guests said to have visited Bagni di Lucca include the poets Byron, Shelley, Lever, Giusti, Monti and, in the 20th century, Carducci, Pascoli, Montale; writers such as Dumas and musicians Strauss, Listz, Paganini, Puccini and Mascagni. The main sights today include the Art Nouveau complex of the 1839 Casino, Italy's first Anglican church - now a library - and the restored English Cemetery. Also look out of Lorenzo Nottolini’s Ponte delle Catene, one of the oldest iron bridges still standing today, and the mediaeval Ponte della Maddalena, an important crossing probably commissioned by the Countess Matilda of Tuscany in the late 12th century and later renovated under the direction of Castruccio Castracani. It became known as Ponte della Maddalena, from an oratory dedicated to Mary Magdalene, whose statue stood at the foot of the bridge on the eastern bank.

Also on this day:

1710: The birth of composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

1881: The birth of San Francisco Opera founder Gaetano Merola

1952: The birth of Mafia hitman Giuseppe Greco

1975: The death of writer and painter Carlo Levi

2015: The death of singer-songwriter Pino Daniele

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Jannik Sinner – tennis player

The astonishingly fast rise of a top Italian sportsman

Jannik Sinner has enjoyed a rapid
rise to the top of the ATP rankings

Jannik Sinner, who has become the highest ranked Italian tennis singles player in history, was born on this day in 2001 in Innichen, also known as San Candido, in northern Italy.

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.

Sinner holds up the trophy after winning the
2024 Australian Open, his first Grand Slam

Sinner entered his first ATP tournament as a lucky loser at the Hungarian Open in 2019. His first ATP Masters victory came at the Italian Open against Steve Johnson and he broke into the top 200 with his next ATP win at the Croatia Open.

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.

Jannik Sinner is often cheered on by a group of
supporters who call themselves the 'Carota Boys'

After reaching the semi-finals of the Vienna Open later that year, he became the first male player born after 2000 to get into the top 10. Also in 2021, he beat big-serving giant John Isner 6-2, 6-0 in a Davis Cup match against the United States, which made him only the second player in Isner's career to "bagel" the American, winning a set without conceding a single game.

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.

Bolzano's duomo, the Cattedrale Maria Himmelfahrt,
was consecrated in 1180 and built in Romanesque style

Travel tip:

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. 

The resort town of Bordighera in Liguria was the
subject of a landscape painting by Monet in 1884

Travel tip:

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

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Matteo Berrettini - tennis champion

First Italian to reach Wimbledon final

Matteo Berrettini has risen to
No 6 in the world rankings

The tennis player Matteo Berrettini, who in 2021 became the first Italian to reach the men’s singles final at the Wimbledon Championships, was born on this day in 1996 in Rome.

Berrettini finished runner-up in the prestigious grass court tournament in South West London, losing in four sets to the world No 1 Novak Djokovic. It was his first appearance in any of the four Grand Slam finals, having previously reached the semi-finals at the US Open in 2019 and the quarter-finals at the French Open in 2021, where he also lost to Djokovic.

A week before the Wimbledon tournament began, Berrettini had won his first ATP 500 level final when he beat the British player Cameron Norrie in the final of the Queen’s Club Championships, also in London and also played on grass.

He proved a popular winner despite home support for his opponent and despite having knocked out another two British players in two-time former Wimbledon champion Andy Murray and Dan Evans on the way to the final.

Berrettini climbed to a career-high No 6 in the ATP world rankings in January 2022 after reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open, where he was beaten by the same player who had denied him a place at the US Open final in 2019, the Spaniard Rafael Nadal.

Growing up in the part of the Monte Sacro quartiere of northeast Rome known as Conca d’Oro, Berrettini was destined for a sporting career from an early age. 

Berrettini reached the semi-finals at
Wimbledon in 2021

His parents, Luca and Claudia, both played tennis at a good club level and gave Matteo his first tennis racquet at the age of three. For a while, however, he rejected the game, preferring swimming and judo. It was his younger brother, Jacopo, with whom he now plays doubles, who persuaded him to see how good he could be at tennis. The two had practised together since they were elementary school children and Jacopo believed his brother had outstanding talent.

Matteo Berrettini’s first steps towards becoming a professional tennis player came at the Circolo Magistrati della Corte dei Conti, whose courts sit by the River Tiber just north of the fashionable Parioli district. There he was coached by Raoul Pietrangeli, a former player with a famous name but actually unrelated to Nicola Pietrangeli, who won the French Open twice and reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 1960.

From there he moved a short distance along the Tiber to the Circolo Canottieri Aniene club, where he joined up with Vincenzo Santopradre, whose achievements as a player were relatively modest but who has been Berrettini’s coach since 2011. 

Berrettini made his ATP main draw debut at the Italian Open in 2017 and won his first world tour title the following year, at the Swiss Open Gstaad clay court tournament.

His major breakthrough year was 2019, when as well as reaching the US Open semi-finals he won ATP titles in Budapest on clay and in Stuttgart on grass, underlining the effectiveness of his all-court game.  He climbed into the top 10 in the world rankings for the first time.

Berrettini at the Euro 2020 final with Sergio
Mattarella and fencer Valentina Vezzali

Berrettini retained his place in the top 10 in Covid-disrupted 2020 and when he reached the fourth round in the French Open in 2021, where the withdrawal of Roger Federer through injury handed him a free passage to the quarter-finals, he became the first Italian in history to have reached the last 16 of all four men’s Grand Slams.

His Queen’s victory in London was another first for an Italian male player and his appearance in the semi-finals at Wimbledon, where he beat the Polish player Hubert Hurkacz, was the first by an Italian man since the aforementioned Pietrangeli in 1960. 

A big football fan, Berrettini was invited as a guest of the Italian President Sergio Mattarella to the delayed final of the Euro 2020 tournament at Wembley just hours after his defeat against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final, arriving in time to see Italy beat the hosts, England, in a penalty shoot-out.

In 2022, Berrettini, who is engaged to the Croatia-born Australian player Ajila Tomljanović, became the first Italian man to reach the quarter-finals of all four majors when the advanced to the last eight of the Australian Open, and subsequently the first Italian man to reach the semi-finals of that tournament, the result elevating him to world No 6.

Piazza Sempione is the main square in Monte Sacro

Travel tip:

Monte Sacro, of which Berrettini’s Conca d’Oro neighbourhood is a part, is a residential suburb of Rome that wraps around the tree-lined banks of the Aniene, a tributary of the Tiber.  Also known as Città Giardino, the area underwent substantial development in the 1920s and combines Baroque and medieval architectural styles. Sitting on slightly elevated land, it is one of the greenest parts of the city, with tree-lined streets, the Parco delle Valli, which has cycle trails that draw visitors from all over Rome, and the Aniene nature reserve, which straddles a large section of the river and feels like a rural oasis in the midst of a bustling city. There are also plenty of pizzerias, bakeries, wine bars, and local shops and the regular Conca d’Oro antiques market, which makes it an increasingly trendy area to live for young professionals.

Rome hotels from Booking.com

The Foro Italico has been the home of the
Italian Open tennis championships since 1935

Travel tip:

The Foro Italico, home of the Italian Open tennis tournament where Matteo Berrettini made his ATP tour main draw debut in 2017, is a sports complex on the slopes of Monte Mario in Rome, on the northwestern fringe of the city centre. It was built between 1928 and 1938 as the Foro Mussolini. Inspired by the Roman forums of the imperial age, and dotted with classical statues, it is seen as a major example of Italian so-called Fascist architecture instituted by Mussolini. The purpose of the project was to secure for Rome the Olympic Games of 1940 but in the event the Games were cancelled because of World War Two.  The Italian Open tennis tournament has been staged at the Foro Italico every year, with a few exceptions, since 1935.

Also on this day:

352: The death of Pope Julius I

1710: The birth of castrato opera singer Caffarelli 

1948: The birth of football coach Marcello Lippi

1950: The birth of entrepreneur Flavio Briatore

1992: The birth of child actor Giorgio Cantarini

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