Tennis, Linda Ferrando returns to Sassari as technical director of the Academy “I’ve played all over the world, now I’m happy to make myself available”
SASSARI. Some loves do not end, they make huge rounds and then come back. The words of a famous hit from the nineties signed by Antonello Venditti could be the soundtrack to the return to Sassari of Linda Ferrando, who after starting her successful professional career on the Torres fields with Mino Piu, returns to the city in working with his old teacher who in the meantime founded the Tennis Academy.
A choice of heart, given that he had never completely abandoned Sardinia, returning several times over the years. And now that his coaching career has reached a sort of crossroads, he will find himself again in this island «for which, notoriously, I have a great passion – he jokes -. I like the idea of working at the Academy, a club that has definitely made a qualitative leap with the doubling of the fields. I also like the idea that it is a club in which there are many children and our goal is to make them grow well ». Linda Ferrando (who is Genoese by birth and lived in Sassari for a few years following her father’s work) starting from the red clay courts of Torres, has built a solid career as a professional, becoming number one in Italy and climbing the world ranking up to position number 33 in 1993. Years in which tennis lived a period of great splendor and the circuit was overflowing with talent with athletes such as Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati and Gabriela Sabatini. And in such a difficult context, Ferrando took away various satisfactions such as those of participating in the Slam tournaments, reaching the fourth round in 1990 in Flushing Meadows, when in a game that went down in history she defeated the emerging Monica Seles, who arrived at the US Open on the wave of a streak of over 40 consecutive victories.
After her career on the pitch, Linda Ferrando has embarked on that of coach and in recent years she has brought her experience and her tennis knowledge to her Liguria, in Rapallo. Then last spring the contact with Mino Piu and the decision to move again to Sassari: «I told him“ I started with you, I want to finish with you ”- he says -. I met him when I was a child and I have wonderful memories of those years, it was easy to make this choice. In Sassari there is a good movement, many good players, I think we can work well. And above all it is a good time for our sport in general: tennis has been favored in some way by the restrictions for covid and many children have approached this discipline, plus there are many Italian tennis players, last in order of time Camila Giorgi, who are achieving great results ». His program is simple: «I am able to teach a little everyone – he says -, I try to convey the experience I have accumulated over many years around the world. And it is essential to make children passionate, to entertain them: at the beginning it is a game, we must not overdo it, things must be done gradually. Compared to my times there is also the advantage of being able to see a lot of tennis on TV and I always tell the boys to watch games as much as possible. I really believe that Supertennis, the thematic channel of Fit, has played an important role in the growth of this discipline in Italy. The models to give to my students? Among women, one of my times, Steffi Graf, but maybe she is a bit far away and so let’s also say Williams and Sharapova. Among men I have no doubts: Roger Federer ».