Sinner, that explains it all: now it’s clear. Here’s what happened and why the blue tennis player did it.
We should be used to his thinking outside the box. Which is not actually thinking outside the box. Quite simply, it is very rare that a boy of his age, full of money and in the golden moment of his career, is so well anchored to the ground. Let him not make any flights of fancy but, rather, continue to be what he always was.
And yet, every time Jannik Sinner gives us a demonstration of his simplicity and genuineness, we cannot help but be enraptured. Incredulous, even. Because it is unusual, precisely, what he does, what he says. And it also seemed unusual the way he reacted to his first Slam title, when in Melbourne he managed to take out Daniil Medvedev in five, fantastic, sets. He laid down on the ground, enjoyed the feeling of having arrived for a few moments, and then everything went back to the way it was before. And it seemed, afterwards, that he almost could not understand the hype generated by that success in the land of kangaroos, precisely because he never got his head up.
Now we understand why. Now that he has spilled the beans, we know why. And once again he surprised us with words that went straight to the heart and turned the spotlight on his normalcy, which is all the more extraordinary in a context that normal, sometimes, is not at all.
Sinner, it’s those things that stay with you in the end
In Indian Wells with him this time is not the full team. Of the two coaches, there is only Darren Cahill, who took over from Simone Vagnozzi so that he, too, could unplug a bit. Then there are physiotherapist Giacomo Naldi, trainer Umberto Ferrara and Papa Hanspeter, who cooks for the whole crew in the California house rented for the occasion.
“Successes are nice,” Jannik pointed out when asked what living together with the rest of the team was like, “but they last a moment. Right after that you get back to work, head down, and so it’s important to do it with the right people because they are the ones you spend the most time with, all year round around the world. Now I have Dad here with me who takes care of us and makes us eat well.”
Then there’s Darren, the good-tempered one of the group, with whom Sinner has bonded from the start: “Pr the team is a great asset,” he said after the win against Kokkinakis, “he’s a humble and kind person, just like my father and it’s nice to have him with us. And those, in the end, are the things that remain.
