The Japan Times - Sinner and Paolini ready to crown golden age of Italian tennis in Rome

Sinner can end a near five-decade wait for an Italian winner of the men's tournament in Rome, with Adriano Panatta way back in 1976 the last man to claim the title for a home player.

The world number one takes on rival Carlos Alcaraz in a blockbuster final for tennis fans who have watched Sinner return from his three-month doping ban for testing positive twice in March last year for traces of clostebol, a contamination doping authorities accept was accidental.

The 23-year-old was the first Italian to win a Grand Slam tournament since Panatta, again since 1976, when he won the Australian Open in January 2024.

He then became the first of his compatriots to claim top spot in the world rankings in June, and then the first to win the year-ending ATP Finals, claiming glory in Turin.

But Sinner, already a winner of 19 titles including three Grand Slams, is not alone at the top of the game as attested by Italy winning both the Davis Cup and, led by Wimbledon and Roland Garros finalist Paolini, the Billie Jean King Cup in 2024.

Italian men have won 31 ATP titles since the start of 2016, compared to just eight in the previous decade.

Lorenzo Musetti made his debut in the top 10 of the world rankings this week after reaching the Monte Carlo final last month and going deep in other tournaments, including a run to the semi-finals in Rome.

Nine Italian, including Luciano Darderi and Flavio Cobolli -- winners in Marrakech and Bucharest in the same week in March -- are in the men's top 100. Only the USA and France have more with 10 each.

- Fifteen years in the making -

At the start of the century the best Italian man was Andrea Gaudenzi at 54th in the world, who is the current president of the ATP, while the Italian men's team played in the third tier of the Davis Cup.

Italian tennis' revival began among its women, with four Fed Cup wins between 2006 and 2013, Francesco Schiavone's French Open title in 2010 and Flavia Pennetta's at the US Open five years later.

And Paolini is gunning for her first 100 series trophy against former US Open champion Coco Gauff on Saturday evening, the first in Rome for an Italian woman since Raffaella Reggi in 1985.

But after some good showing from Fabio Fognini who became the first Italian to win a Masters 1000 tournament, at Monte Carlo in 2019, men's tennis upped its game with the arrival of 2021 Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini and Sinner.

"It's the result of 15 years of good work within the federation (FITP), starting from the clubs up to the top level and with a lot of international tournament in all ages groups," said Spanish former world number seven Emilio Sanchez, now a coach.

"They've decentralised the organisation of their youth structure. Before everyone had to go through a national training centre and be taken away from their home environment. Now the federation goes to the players, and funds them."

Filippo Volandri, the head of top-level men's tennis training for the FITP, says that the decentralisation, a wide network of coaches and access from a young age to both physical and mental trainers, allows "all young players to express their potential.

"That's the big difference between what we did before, when we saw that Italian players matured late or never reached their full potential," said Volandri.

The FITP, headed since 2001 by Angelo Binaghi, has also implemented a plan to build hard courts in a clay-court dominated country, a move which has also been accompanied by a change in playing style and training.

"We prioritise tactics over technique, and to serves and returns ahead of repetitive coaching of forehand or backhand strokes," Michelangelo Dell'Edera, the director of the FITP's Higher Training Institute, told AFP.

K.Tanaka--JT