Jannik Sinner – German quality in the Italian champion

New Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner is a product of Italian tennis's elite, but has the quiet, disciplined personality of a German-speaking frontiersman.

Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper on January 29 called Sinner "golden boy" on its cover with a portrait of the 2024 Australian Open champion. The leading Italian newspaper is proud of the elite tennis product from the academy of the legend Riccardo Piatti on the Riviera.

Before heading to the southern French coast to train with veteran coach Patti, Sinner was born and raised in the small town of San Candido in northeastern Italy, a region close to the Austrian border where German is spoken and culturally rich.

“It’s a completely different part of Italy,” Sinner’s coach Simone Vagnozzi told The Athletic of his player’s birthplace. “The Italians there are very serious. They don’t talk much. That’s probably the German side of Sinner.”

Siiner with her first Grand Slam title - Australian Open 2024, at Melbourne Park on the afternoon of January 28. Photo: Reuters

Watching Sinner play and behave, one can somewhat imagine the German identity in him. Sinner is different from most of his famous contemporary compatriots. Matteo Berrettini plays with passion, serves thunderously and is not afraid to show emotion. Lorenzo Musetti has a flashy one-handed backhand, while Fabio Fognini is explosive, talkative and can explode at any time.

Sinner showed remarkable composure at the age of 22. When he defeated the world’s strongest opponent Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open semi-finals on January 26, the young man only raised his arms in victory. He did not scream, tear his shirt, or jump up. Sinner also showed his German mettle in the final, where he lost the first two sets to Daniil Medvedev but won the last three.

“He has a sense of humor, and that’s the Italian side of him,” Vagnozzi added of Sinner. The 11-time ATP Tour champion often jokes with his coaching staff, calling them his second family. He plays cards and golf with coach Darren Cahill, an Australian who is culturally different.

"I don't get paid enough," Cahill joked when asked about the difficulty of training Sinner. "He was always giving me a hard time, taking money from me at cards and seemed to enjoy it."

When he returned to the interview, Coach Cahill revealed that his student was addicted to training. He said: "He can practice one shot for four or five hours. If I don't yell at him, he won't leave the practice field. I have to try to balance Sinner's training and competition."

Sinner was athletic from an early age. His father was a chef and his mother was a waitress in a restaurant in a major ski resort. Sinner therefore skied from a young age, becoming a skiing champion at the age of eight, and then second in the Italian skiing world at the age of 12. A year after this success, Sinner gave up skiing and football completely to concentrate on tennis, on the advice of his chef father.

"I'm grateful to my parents for always letting me do what I love from a young age," Sinner said in an interview with the ATP Tour after the 2024 Australian Open. "Without the many opportunities that were given to me, I wouldn't have known what I was suited for."

Sinner has just helped Italy end its 47-year Davis Cup drought, in November 2023. Photo: ATP

Sinner's father, Hanspeter, regrets missing out on watching his son compete in Melbourne last week. But he has complete confidence in the boy, who has been trained for a decade both professionally and culturally. "Sinner knows how to behave. He has been taught since he was a child and has always been a champion in my eyes," he said.

Sinner won 197 matches and lost 74 in five years as a professional. Coach Piatti once advised him to view his first 150 matches as learning experiences. But Sinner found success much sooner, with his first title in 2020, followed by 10 more in three years.

In early 2022, Sinner shocked the world when he parted ways with Piatti, the 65-year-old coach who is considered the Italian tennis sage. In July of that year, Sinner teamed up with the Cahill-Vagnozzi coaching duo. Cahill has coached three world number ones, Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi and Simona Halep, while Vagnozzi is a fitness expert, physiotherapist and often directly guides Sinner during matches.

Discipline and science have been emphasized more since Sinner joined the new team. They aim to turn him into a versatile player, one who can do more than just hit consistently behind the baseline. To change himself, Sinner's team accepts that they have to take one step back to have the opportunity to take two steps forward.

Sinner dropped to 15th in the world at the end of 2022, compared to the 10th position achieved at the end of 2021. During this difficult period, perseverance helped the Italian talent gradually improve, while Carlos Alcaraz won a Grand Slam and Holger Rune climbed up the ATP rankings.

"Persistence has helped me to surpass my own level. It's not easy to do, you have to practice patience," Sinner said after winning the 2024 Australian Open. "This is definitely the result of more than a year of work, the process that we have worked together to find the best version of me."

Sinner, like a German, does not talk much even on professional matters. He works quietly according to his plan, progressing step by step steadily. After reaching the quarterfinals of the 2022 US Open, he reached the semifinals of Wimbledon 2023, before winning the title in Melbourne last week.

"I only talked about tactics against Djokovic about 20 minutes before the Australian Open semi-final," the Italian revealed to the ATP Tour. "The coach and I mainly talked about how to handle typical situations. Cahill and the team helped me believe in myself. The time together before was very important because it helped us understand each other and bond more."

Sinner is the third Italian to win a Grand Slam, and only the second in the Open Era. Italy has waited half a century for a major men’s singles champion, so all eyes are on Sinner. The 22-year-old will meet the Italian Prime Minister and President this week, before returning to his family in the snowy mountains of San Candido, where his mother Siglinde has embroidered a congratulatory message in German on a new pillow.

"He can cook too," Ms. Siglinde boasted to a Gazzetta reporter on January 29.

Vy Anh

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