At the age of 47, diehard AC Milan fan Ninni Licata has hung up his football boots in exchange for a tennis racket.
Like thousands of Italians in recent years, Licata has been unable to resist the lure of a game that for years had been relegated to the sidelines of the country’s national sports, overshadowed by football and Formula One.
Tennis is now witnessing a renaissance in Italy, led by the world men’s No 1, Jannik Sinner, born in South Tirol, who is followed by a cohort of young, talented players now climbing towards the top of the game.
The rise of the sport has also left national television at a crossroads, broadcasters at times grappling with whether to show live matches of the country’s football team or ATP tournaments.
There are nine Italian male players ranked inside the ATP top 100. Italy last month won the Davis Cup for the second year in a row, while the women’s team secured the Billie Jean King Cup. The percentage of Italians following tennis has surged to 39%, nearly doubling since 2016. According to a survey by the leading sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, children’s tennis club enrolments have risen by 30% in 2024 alone. In 2001, the total number of tennis players registered in clubs was just 129,000; today, registrations have surpassed a million.
“It’s sad when I think about how much time I wasted on football when I could have invested that time into starting tennis much earlier,” says Licata. “Sometimes, while grocery shopping, I catch myself simulating forehand and backhand movements among the food shelves. I must look like a madman to those watching from the outside.”
“Everyone is crazy about tennis,” says Alfredo Tumminello, a coach at Circolo del Tennis Palermo, awarded the best tennis club in Italy by the Italian Tennis Federation for the second year in a row. “In the summer, before the start of the courses, I receive dozens of calls from parents who want to enrol their children. Not only that, the children’s passion has been transmitted to the parents. There are hundreds of adults who accompany their children to tennis lessons and then also ask to attend courses themselves. We have even opened a free course for players over 65.”
“Three years ago my daughter expressed the desire to practise this sport,” says Licata. “I used to accompany her to training sessions and was forced to wait an hour at the club before she finished. I watched people play, the sound of the ball hitting the racket. I decided to join the club myself. So while she trained, I took tennis lessons.”
For Antonio Tarantino, 46, and his children, it has been the other way around. A devoted football fan too, two years ago he was captivated by the rise of tennis in Italy, starting with the champion Matteo Berrettini, who was in 2021 the first Italian to reach the men’s final at Wimbledon, and then subsequently with the ascent of Sinner.
“My children, who played football, used to beg me to take them to my matches,” says Tarantino, a teacher at the hotel school in Bitonto, Puglia. “Finally, one day they said: ‘Dad, we don’t want to play football any more, we want to play tennis like you.’ I couldn’t be more happy.”
Giorgio Lo Cascio, president of the Palermo tennis club, describes the current moment of glory in tennis as the “Sinner effect”. He says: “It is reminiscent of when Italian skiing champion Alberto Tomba led to thousands of Italians taking up skiing lessons.”
Amid the global buzz surrounding the rise of Italian tennis, several experts have pondered the secret of its success. Some suggest that one winning strategy has been to train Italian tennis players, historically accustomed to playing on clay which once represented 90% of Italy’s courts, to compete on synthetic hard courts in order to excel in ATP tournaments.
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Lo Cascio believes that one of the most decisive factors has been the creation of numerous lower-level tournaments across Italy, providing hundreds of teenagers with the opportunity to play regularly. “In the past, these young players had to travel to South America or other countries to compete, incurring huge costs for their families,” he says. “By establishing competitive tournaments in Italy, these youngsters only needed to hop on a train to compete and showcase their skills.”
Yet according to many, another sport has contributed to the rise of tennis in Italy: a sport whose growth was due to Covid-19. The government introduced a list of draconian rules to slow the outbreak, including which sports Italians would be allowed to practise. Among the activities the authorities considered safe was padel, a fast-paced racket sport popular in Spain, similar to tennis but with a dash of squash thrown in. For Italians, it was love at first smash. No sport in Italy has ever had such success in such a short time, going from just a few hundred courts before Covid to almost 8,000 in 2024. Thousands of Italians practising padel then decided to take tennis lessons, decidedly more technical and competitive.
“Padel has definitely contributed to the success of tennis in Italy, especially because, unlike in other countries, padel is part of the same tennis federation, helping to increase the presence of players and members in our tennis clubs,” said Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian Tennis Federation since 2001 and widely considered to be the architect of the success of tennis in Italy. “But if you ask me what has really made a difference in the rise of this sport in our country, I will tell you that it was tennis TV.”
One of the main issues facing Italian tennis in the past was the lack of matches broadcast on television. In November 2008, the federation launched a channel named SuperTennis, airing not only the big tournaments but also the Challengers, WTA, ITF Tours and even some juniors. This has transitioned from a few thousand viewers to almost 1,788,045 people who tuned in to follow the US Open final between Sinner and Taylor Fritz. Rai, Italy’s public television, is now struggling to cope with the pressure from Italian fans demanding tennis on its channels.
“I can no longer stand for tennis to be considered a minor sport,” Binaghi said. “It is no longer the case. And it’s time for everyone to take note.”
Source: theguardian.com
