There are no more ‘ifs’: Djokovic gives up, Sinner is world number 1

Djokovic withdraws before the semi-finals. The new number 1 in tennis is Italian.

ROME – There are no more “ifs”. And even the “buts”, at this point, aren’t doing very well. For months we practiced the exhausted recalculation of a possibility: “Sinner becomes number 1 if…“. He connected the dots,the conditional is a time expired. Sinner He is number 1 in the world. Present. Maybe near future, but in short the best. The prime number without the accompanying literary solitude: too many wagons, too many winners, the trap of “made in Italy” lurking. Sinner is a champion despite the context, on the run, like those of romantic cycling happy “to have arrived one“. He climbed the ranking of the ATP almost in absentia: at Roland Garros Djokovic achieved offered as a sacrifice for him, retiring after two 5-set marathons and a wobbly knee. A forfeit that comes while Sinner is on the court with Dimitrov, in the third set. A historic title, almost without his knowing it.

Italy had never had number 1 in tennis. It had always been a sport of other people’s myths. Now they will stop interviewing Panatta or Pietrangeli. Sinner moves to another club, a place frequented by the various Nastases, Connors, Borg, McEnroe, Lendl, Sampras, Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. You enter only by breaking down the door, into that pantheon. But in our perception of history he is also part of another, more transversal collection of heroes. In Italy Sinner includes Tomba, Coppi, Nuvolari, Valentino Rossi, Jury Chechi, Mennea, Federica Pellegrini and Sara Simeoni. At the top of tennis is Messner. It’s a different perspective, a parallel dimension inhabited by everyone, for profit or passion.

Jannik Sinner is the zeitgeist of this country, if we knew how to express a concept with a word, like the Germans do. It is the spirit of our time, much more than we are capable of admitting.It is a pleasantly aware “victim” of embezzlement: we couldn’t wait to be able to resell it “Italian” for the marketing of patriotic pride. The “national case” of the Gazzetta dello Sport is now waste paper. And so the blasphemous “no” in Sanremo, the controversy over the house in Monte Carlo like any Fini brother-in-law, the accusation of an imaginary rather than tax evasion: all resolved, amnestied by success. This is how we are made. Not him.

In the meantime he did nothing but play tennis. Work, commit, improve. And win. The first Masters 1000, the Davis Cup, the Australian Slam. At a certain point we adjectiveized it. A Sinner has emerged for every sport, for every federation. The Sinner of basketball, the Sinner of clay pigeon shooting. Even Spalletti called him up as an example of his new national teams (Chiesa was “our Sinner” for a while…). A symbiotic transition of state, from the average Italian to the universal champion. A revenge by proxy: let’s scrap the paraphernalia of defeat, for once. It no longer belongs to us. All in all, just do like him, what’s the point?

Sinner has become a sort of Manzi master of tennis: not only do Italians now watch his matches on TV, but thanks to the combination with the rewarding algorithm of Google searches every turn that he overcomes, gives birth to a “who he is” on the newspapers’ websites. “Who is Kotov the opponent of Sinner”; “Who is Eubanks Sinner’s opponent”. Since he beats them all more or less, the Italians in tow are developing an encyclopaedic culture.

We know everything about him. We know his hunger, the variables of his tennis, the sound of the ball hitting – an explosion, BUM: that’s enough to register his trademark. The shy South Tyrolean family, a few flames without excessive gossip. We hang out with Cahill and Vagnozzi more than our blood ties. We envy his extraordinary emotional stability while we hysterically devour eco-leather sofas at the wrong call from the chair umpire. It is our soul stabilizer: victories are never exaggerated, and defeats are never tragedies. It’s not a joke, it’s a public service.