“I can’t believe he went and did it,” my tennis-obsessed brother-in-law said, after Jannick Sinner won the Australian Open. “It’s honestly so good to have someone from our country playing tennis so well.”
Italy venerates its footballers and loves racing drivers of any nationality, especially those who drive for Ferrari. But they have the backing of their teammates and garage staff. Singles tennis is different. The onus and pressure of winning is on the player alone. They play as a team of one.
That’s perhaps why so many Italians were amazed and overjoyed when 22-year-old Sinner won in Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena. He defeated Russia’s Daniil Medvedev to give Italy its first-ever Australian Open winner. That’s no small feat.
What makes Sinner’s victory that much greater was knocking out the current world No 1, Novak Djokovic, in the semi-finals. This was not the first time il Peccatore (Sinner’s directly translated Italian nickname) had defeated the vaccine-averse Serbian; he also beat him back in October in the Davis Cup semi-final. He then went on to bag Italy its first victory in that cup since 1976, after beating Australia’s Alexei Popyrin in the first singles matches.
This was when Italy, a football-loving country, started taking a collective national interest in tennis. Could it be that Sinner, currently ranked as world No 4, has the potential to become No 1?
The buzz surrounding his string of victories has been nothing short of electric. “Dai Sinner!” (“Come on Sinner!) and “Grande Sinner” were what most people were saying on social media. I even heard my upstairs neighbour shouting encouragement, presumably at the TV.
It was nearly too much for my friend Gloria. “That was tense,” she told me. “I was really nervous for him in the first part, as he was getting beaten. But he won! It makes me so happy to see someone from Italy being excellent at tennis.”
And that’s just the thing: Sinner was born in the South Tyrol region, in a small town named San Candido. In fact, it’s so tiny that its population is just under 4,000. This autonomous Italian province sits on the border of Austria and became a self-governing area in 1946 under the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement, which was passed in order to safeguard the South Tyrol’s German minority. This meant a guarantee of autonomous legislative and executive powers and regulations.
And so, although the South Tyrol is part of Italy, 69.4% of its inhabitants speak German, and only 26% Italian. This has led to some identity struggles for those people, known as altoatesini, who live in the region. It has also led to the formation of separatist parties, such as Die Freiheitlichen and South Tyrolean Freedom.
As his name suggests, Sinner is one of those German-speaking Italians, and he grew up speaking it at home. In an interview with GQ two years ago, he admitted that, when he first moved south to Liguria to train at the Riccardo Piatti Academy, his Italian was poor and he struggled to make himself understood.
Normally, when Italians talk about people from the South Tyrol, it’s to make jokes about them really being Austrians. But not this time. His cultural difference is still there, and it makes Sinner more intriguing than other Italian players – and yet all of Italy loves him now.
Could it be because he has learned to speak Italian flawlessly? Could it be that people simply recognise him as being Italian (which he is) even if he happens to be from an autonomous province? Or could it be because Sinner is very, very good at what he does and Italians, like everyone else, just love a winner?
