Sinner, no grudge is not even where he belongs. The verdict is already official: promoted him without a second thought.
Only time will tell if we were right. If it is true, as so many think, that Jannik Sinner is so strong that he can easily aspire to the ascent to the top. And that he is destined, as if that were not enough, to be one of the future Big Three who will walk in the footsteps of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
The sun has not yet set on the era of the three champions who rewrote tennis history, but it is clear that the new generation is in a hurry. They have it especially Sinner, precisely, but also Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune, who in the collective imagination are the three champions who will dominate the rankings in the coming decades. It is too early to draw conclusions, of course, yet there are those who are convinced that generational change is now imminent. That it will happen any moment now, and that the San Candido native, for obvious reasons, will be one of the key tennis figures of the future.
Thinking so is a certain coach, quite influential, who knows both the old and the new generation very well. Who has made tennis the focal point of his life and who sensed, even before everyone else, how much potential there was behind that tall, skinny, muscle-less kid with the unmistakable red mop.
There is a bit of Djokovic in Sinner: Piatti’s word
We are talking, for those who haven’t figured it out yet, about Riccardo Piatti, the coach who dragged Jannik down from the mountains of Trentino and brought him with him to Bordighera. And it was there, among the fields of his Academy, that that teenager grew up to become a champion.
Their sudden separation was talked about long and hard, but it was never made clear why Sinner decided at some point to say goodbye to his longtime mentor. It may not have ended well, according to the rumors, yet Piatti clearly continues to hold his protégé in very high esteem. And he must also be credited, as if that were not enough, with admirable fair play: “The team that replaced me has done a good job,” he told We Love Tennis, without the slightest bitterness, “Sinner is making progress and will work hard until he achieves his dream, which is to win all the Grand Slam tournaments and become world No. 1.
“I also had the chance to follow Djokovic for a while when he was younger,” Piatti further added, “and they have many similar mental characteristics. Not in the game but mentally. Knowing Jannik very well, I saw the old Djokovic again.” An extremely flattering as well as authoritative comparison, the coach being one of the top tennis experts around. Let us only hope, then, that Jannik may soon have something else in common with Nole as well. Like the number of Atp titles, for example…
