Fognini, passion was on the verge of dying out, but the tennis player managed to save this longtime love: here’s how he did it.
So many highs, so many lows, so many joys, so many sorrows. Fabio Fognini’s career has never been linear, much less boring. He’s taken a lot of satisfaction, including winning a Masters 1000, the Monte Carlo Masters, and he’s okay with that. He is proud of everything he has accomplished and has no recriminations, although there are many who think that with his talent he could have gone, possibly, much farther.
He has also never denied his mistakes, so much so that he talked about them, in Paris, at a press conference. “I paid the consequences,” he said in reference to these mistakes, which can be traced to his somewhat fuming temper and his, never concealed, impulsiveness. “I’m certainly not like Sinner: he’s perfect, everyone loves him. I, on the other hand, am imperfect, you either loved me or hated me.”
In his meeting with journalists present at Roland Garros, he also talked about the possibility of leaving the scene: “I was very close to retirement,” he admitted, as Virgilio Sport reports. “I went through a complicated period, unhappy. Last season after this tournament I was stuck in the pits for two months, and as the years go by, recovery is more and more difficult. I played tournaments to move up in the rankings, and at that moment I wondered why I was doing it: even if I had won them, nothing would have changed. “
Fognini and that passion that was about to die out
What he feels toward tennis and competition, he admitted again, is a true, pure, crystal-clear love. A love that knows no bounds and that he saved, in the darkest moment of his career, by leveraging a disappointment that could have discouraged, at worst, anyone but Fabio.
The reference is to his exclusion from the Italian team in the Davis Cup, a competition he always cared a lot about but was forced to give up. Luckily, he was able to take advantage of it: “What happened with Davis triggered a reaction in me. That mockery led me to react. I was losing my passion, and the exclusion from Davis helped me turn around. I got back close to the top 100 in two tournaments. Then I got injured again, but now I am 90th. It’s these little things that repay the love I have for tennis and the desire I’ve always had to compete even when I wasn’t 100 percent.”
Not all ills come to harm, then. Because from the ashes, and Fognini is a clear demonstration of this, one can always be reborn. And come back, why not, even stronger than you were before you “burned out. “
