Sinnerlandia is the land of possibilities, the place where everything is allowed if dreams are touched by the magic wand of Jannik Sinner, the boy born to ski and transported to the valley by a sweet drift of existence. The feat completed, the fifth Italian player in history to win a Grand Slam tournament (before him Nicola Pietrangeli, Adriano Panatta, Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta), 48 years after the annus mirabilis of Italian tennis (Rome and Paris signed by Panatta, then the Davis conquered in Pinochet’s Chile: it was ’76), Jannik of Australia is the Italian who lies down on the pitch, perhaps looking for an angel to thank. «I looked at the sky. I said to myself: you played a great game, you were in difficulty and you got out of it. I thought about the work it took to get here, about the problems I overcome, about my parents who left me free to choose what to become.” Did he cry? No. The mountain shapes you with a warm heart, but freezes your emotions under the skin.
Here he is, the champion Italy has been waiting for for almost half a century. He is 22 years old and wears the seriousness of a veteran and the work ethic passed on to him by Hanspeter and Siglinde, who until recently woke up at 7 in the morning to go to work (cook and waitress) at the refuge in Val Fiscalina, few references to his age (zero tattoos, very clear ideas, language steeped in tennis slang, an “atomic cool” that only escaped on the track at Fiorano, when they made him test the Ferrari SF90 Spider), the innate grace to complete the collective mission (the Davis won in Malaga in November, on top of a 47-year wait) before veering towards a healthy selfishness, as if the country’s expectations came before his own, were a necessary viaticum towards personal legend.
Jannik Sinner becomes king of the Australian Open at the end of two perfect weeks until the semi-final, a milestone that marks the beginning of the decline of number one Novak Djokovic who was subjected to a brutal scrapping, then against Daniil Medvedev for the title (disintegrated on the street l Russian army: Khachanov in the fourth round and Rublev in the quarterfinals) all the break points he hadn’t conceded up to that point escape his racket. A bit of physiological tension, him in his first major final and the Russian in his fifth, two sets quickly flown by, the strength to plant himself in the middle of the court like an exported Dolomite, finding within himself the will to suffer like never before the snow would have required him. «In giant slalom the match lasts a few minutes, a match you know when it starts but not when it ends». He preferred the open-air psychoanalysis of tennis to the wide posts. The break against Medvedev in the second set, apparently useless because the world number 3 soon after took a 2-0 lead, actually opened the first crack in mother Russia. Jannik has the merit of believing in it, of favoring with a presence of enormous substance the inexorable consumption of the Medvedev candle (lit for 20h33′ against the 14h44′ spent on the pitch by the blue) until the final extinguishing, sanctioned by a forehand down the line ( 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3), classy grips on the first Slam of his career (certainly not the last), the perimeter that delimits the enormity of the champions.
There is a lot of comparisons with the Holy Trinity of tennis, Djokovic-Nadal-Federer mentioned in strict Major order (24 -22-20), the isosceles triangle (Federer and Nadal welded like oxygen and hydrogen in the formula of water, Djoker obsessed with the chase, until completing it and going beyond) that dominated the courts for fifteen years. And in fact, beyond Sinner’s congenital pragmatism, which rejects comparisons with the myth of Panatta (like him who rose to number 4 in the rankings), let alone with the Immortals, Jannik does nothing to reject them. In Davis he was the first to cancel three match points against Djoker, in Melbourne no one had ever denied the best the shred of a break point, he overcame two sets from a deficit like Borg in Paris ’74, he is the first tennis player since 2014 to win home the Australian Open without Djokovic or Nadal or Federer.
It’s Jannik Sinner from Val Pusteria, Italy, even the dinosaur Rod Laver bothers him: «Italian tennis is in good hands». The Red Baron excites because it extends our dream. Sinnerlandia is destined for expansion.