The announcement of the Davis Cup captain Filippo Volandri, regarding thethe absence of Jannik Sinner, at the next Davis finals scheduled in Bologna from 18 to 23 November, has sparked a lot of controversyand it was in the order of things for it to happen.
And who wouldn’t want to say: Jannik think again, does he at least leave a window open in case Italy reached the final and served the decisive point? It would be an excellent way, among other things, to avoid giving rise to ungenerous controversies such as those that ask the South Tyrolean champion every time for certificates of Italianness, and to also silence those that have to do with the excess of business to be contrasted with the romantic attachment to the shirt. We would also like Jannik Sinner to think again and give his contribution to the national team for the third time in a row or at least, even without saying it so as not to delude himself that he kept open in his heart, his availability to contribute to Italy’s last mile in case of need.
But we also know that the last word on good or bad planning, of a season or even more so of a career, in the grinder that is the contemporary tennis circuit, can only be put, with hindsight, at the end.
PANATTA AND BERTOLUCCI: DIFFERENT TIMES
Just look at the story of Dominik Thiem, one of the greatest talents that tennis has expressed in recent years, and who could not mentally withstand the pressure from the top. Just look at the serious injuries that are increasingly at risk: Holger Rune, the Danish boy who was said to be able to undermine the dyarchy of Sinner and Alcaraz by fixing a few things, broke his Achilles tendon a few days ago at the age of 22 and who knows when and how he will return.
In fact, we must not forget that the ATP circuit, the professional tour of world tennis, is a rollercoaster that gives a lot but asks a lot and that no tennis player can delude himself into riding: once you are on it, even more so if you are among the leaders, you have to turn at the pace that is dictated to you.
Especially if, as in the case of Sinner in this season finale, there is a need to recover points, which Davis does not give. In fact, it is no coincidence that, in saying “in my time, I would not have given up the Davis”, both Adriano Panatta and Paolo Bertolucci, the only ones in the team with Corrado Barazzutti and Antonio Zugarelli, to have won the Davis, before 2023 and 2024 with Sinner’s decisive points, remember that these are different and incomparable times, because in the general calculation the Davis had a greater weight at the time, because the circuit was less dense and because the intensity of the game was enormously lower. They are also different situations: Jannik Sinner, now 24 years old, has already won more on his own than in the entire history of Italian tennis up to this point.
THE MATCH WITH HISTORY
As we have seen in the current season, Sinner already has what it takes to play a match with the history of tennis on a global level, as his precocity records say, among other things.: the victories of Australia and Wimbledon and the two match points at Roland Garros 2025 indicate that he would already be technically, but not yet physically, ready to attempt the assault on the Grand Slam (intended for those who win the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open in the same calendar year).
For anyone who ever gets there, and the same goes for rival Carlos Alcaraz, it would mean definitively overtaking Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the ideal ranking of the history of tennis. who, despite having conquered the impossible, did not get there. it is obvious that no tennis player in his right mind would ever dare to say that he would consider such an objective, if only out of superstition or to avoid being presumptuous, but Jannik Sinner, 24 years old, and Carlos Alcaraz, 22, due to their age and the gap in performance they have over the third, are the only ones who can think about it in the long term, perhaps only in the subconscious of their nocturnal dreams, and in any case who can imagine getting closer the record of victories of those three, who dominated tennis for fifteen years.
THE NEXT FIVE YEARS WILL BE DECISIVE
To put enough in your game to play this match with history, it is necessary to collect as much as possible and be found at best in the next five years, when between the ages of 25 and 30, the best mix of athleticism and experience is put on the field athletically. But all this can only be done if you plan carefully and start the season by winning in Australia in January, this is why, even if it is not very romantic, it may have a logic, not for everyone but for the number two in the world who must regain the top perhaps yes, to make the calculation to extend the break from competitions between November and December by a week – which is different from taking the same break in October in correspondence with the pharaonic exhibition in Riyadh -, to refine the athletic preparation, work off the load and arrive in maximum form, with the melt absorbed in the field on the other side of the world, ready to hit the road in sixth gear.
THE HOPE THAT YOU THINK AGAIN
From this perspective, it is possible that, even if it was already in the air, Sinner’s renunciation of Davis would not have come if he had taken all 3500 points up for grabs between the US Open, Beijing and Shanghai, which did not all arrive and therefore now force him to chase to get back in the running for number one. Because good programming also requires the flexibility to be able to change on the fly.
This does not mean that we renew the invitation, physically allowing Jannik Sinner, to think again about Davis at least surprisingly for the last mile, despite knowing that Italy with Lorenzo Musetti, Flavio Cobolli, Luciano Darderi and Lorenzo Sonego in the top 44 in the world has all the cards to raise the salad bowl anyway and who perhaps would also be happy to win it all on the pitch – without having to give it up to the more famous -, because if we love sport it is also for its poetic dimension, not just for the engineering one, whose importance we nevertheless recognize. And a Davis raised at home has poetry. Although we will continue to support Jannik in his game with history.
