After almost 15 years of competitive dimness – if not even darkness – it was the turn of a very talented young man from Rome, son of Ascenzio (the caretaker of the Tennis Club Parioli), to light up the prospects of a tennis landscape that had not really been tinged with “azzurro”. In his early 20s, that authentically Roman, handsome young man, whom during the time of “La Dolce Vita” women liked so much (even though sometimes he went a bit too far with a behaviour that could be defined as…a tad arrogant and distinctive of a bully), showed flashes of pure talent by playing magnificent, spectacular tennis and beating, in days of top form, some of the world’s best tennis players: Orantes, Nastase, Borg, Rosewall, Connors. While it was impossible not to fall in love with his technical skills, with his variety and extravagance, even in a time where all big players had different styles, he was criticised for one thing only – his inconsistency, namely those days of top form being too sporadic.
There were no tennis players who didn’t fear him. Even Bjorn Borg, the world’s strongest tennis player at the time – surely on clay, but five victories at Wimbledon marked his being an all-round player – knew that Adriano Panatta in top form could have made him tumble down into the fine, red dust. And that happened more than once, including at the most important events. Borg took part in eight French Opens, and won six of them. Who did he lose to on those two occasions? Adriano Panatta. It happened in 1973, but as mentioned, 1976 was his magical year. He triumphed in the tournament that he held dear, in Rome, close to home. To accomplish a major sport endeavour, one needs a lot of physical and mental strength, courage and – as another big player would have said 43 years later in a certain principality – even a bit of luck.
Until that memorable week at the Foro Italico, Adriano had beaten many important opponents, won several minor tournaments, but not yet a big tournament, even though everyone could see the high potential in him. However, he was never the favourite for the final victory. Everyone knew that he could win against anyone, and everyone hoped for it. But that only really happened every now and then. Many other times, for those who had fallen in love with his style of play, what happened was instead the opposite. Fede Torre wrote on Ubitennis – and I invite you to read it again – a while ago: “A sportsperson is never the one who wins, but the emotion that they convey by doing it and the way people identify with them. It is a destiny restricted to only few ones – the destiny of a Valentino Rossi, an Alberto Tomba, a Marco Pantani, a Roberto Baggio. Adriano Panatta was all this. He was handsome, he was young. On the court, he was elegant. Outside, even more”.
That week too, it really seemed that it was not meant to be. Playing against an Aussie who was not a top player and certainly not one of the great Australians who wrote the history of tennis – a certain Kim Warwick, talented of course (the previous week he had beaten Kodes in Hamburg) but a bit crazy and almost hysterical in some situations – Adriano bumped into what could have looked like a bad day. Or so it seemed until almost the very end. Warwick had – and it is no joke – 11 match points. Ten on his own serve starting from when he was 5-2 40-15 up, then another three in the same game. The others when he was 5-4 40-0. Since I noted them down one by one, allow me to say it again – it is no joke. Two of them were exciting, very close racquet-to-racquet exchanges, and the audience went crazy: ‘Adriaaanooo Aaadriaaanooo!’. Who knows how Panatta turned a bad day into an unbelievable day, when he magically started to return divinely, to play incredible passing shots with the Australian desperately attacking the net, match point after match point. Returns and passing shots had never been Adriano’s strength points, yet miraculously and suddenly they became so that day.
Perhaps it was luck, and so what? Then again maybe it wasn’t, because after that Adriano nailed an extraordinary sequence of wins, against very strong clay court players. He struggled again against Tonino Zugarelli, who was from Rome too but was treated like a foreigner by Adriano’s often unjust fans. It was then the time of Franulovic (the current director of the Monte Carlo tournament), and afterwards Solomon, who retired in protest due to an umpire’s decision when he was 5-4 up in the third set. Next, Adriano crushed Newcombe getting everyone excited, and finally he reached the highest point in the final by defeating Guillermo Vilas, who, after Borg, was undoubtedly the strongest and most consistent player on clay. He beat Vilas in four sets. It was pandemonium. In that tournament, there were seven of the world’s top 10 players. Could we still talk about luck? Certainly not. But in every victory, except maybe some of Borg’s and Nadal’s at the French Open, just to remain in the clay world, there is always a bit of luck.
I will keep it short with Panatta at the French Open. Even that looked like anything but his tournament. In the first round against the Czech Pavel Hutka, it looked like another bad day for almost the whole match, until when he miraculously saved a match point with a phenomenal dive. A different Panatta played the second part of the match, and won it easily making it look like an exhibition. Both in the semi-final and in the final, he would beat two hardcore, short guys who were very much alike, both in physical structure and style of tennis – double-handed backhand capable of very narrow cross-court angles, a mediocre serve, and at the net only to shake hands with their opponent at the end of the match. Still two top 10 players with great consistency and solidity. However, his masterpiece was achieved in the quarter-finals, when his victim was the most prestigious player, dominated with dropshots disguised as feigned chop approaches, wrong-foot attacks, sudden serve&volleys. Bjorn Borg, the strongest ever tennis player on clay before the advent of Nadal, looked powerless. The Parisians got excited thanks to Panatta’s splendid, creative and varied tennis, the same way as the Romans did at the Foro Italico.
Panatta would achieve his best ranking first in Rome and then in Paris, when some already doubted that he would ever make it at such high levels, due to his helplessness in keeping up with the favourable predictions. In Florence, where he also won in the past, unfortunately I saw him lose to almost unknown players such as the Bolivian Benavides, the Americans Winitski and Fagel, and the Australian Dibley.
Well, Giovan Battista Vico will surely agree with me, wherever he is now. Fabio Fognini’s history resembles a lot Adriano Panatta’s. In terms of pure talent and potential, I often compared Fabio to Adriano, frequently writing that in the last 40 years Italian tennis has not seen a stronger and more talented tennis player.
For almost ten years, even without any big tournament, he has constantly been in the world’s top 20 and everyone has expected him to break into the top 10 for years. Fabio has always been the first one to explain the reason why he has never managed to do this – it is a head issue, certainly not a tennis issue. In the good days, his tennis has always been more enjoyable to watch than many top 10 players. We don’t need to mention anyone.
Just like at the Foro Italico 43 years ago, what had been forecast a thousand times without it happening has now happened in Monte Carlo. This is the chronicle of a proclaimed event. He is on the verge of defeat against Rublev (who may not be a Safin or a Kafelnikov but was able to reach the quarter-finals at the US Open as a teenager) – a bit crazy like Kim Warwick. But less brave, or reckless, than Fognini, who scores an ace with his second serve on one of the five break points that Rublev does not convert to go and serve on the 6-4 5-1 up.
After that miraculous and lucky turnaround, Fognini is even luckier as the Frenchman Simon, who had beaten him five times out of five, gives him a walkover. However, then he gives a tennis lesson to the world’s number 3, who had only allowed Fognini to win six games per match in the last two previous encounters. A sheer display of tennis. The great show goes on with Coric – after a first set played by Fognini’s poor substitute, he plays the other two the way he alone knows. And here’s Borg – sorry, Nadal – in the semi-final. Like Borg, Rafa knows that he may lose to an inspired Fognini. It had already happened to him three times. Once despite being two sets up and not in any tournament – it was the US Open.
As soon as things don’t look up for him, Rafa gets nervous. He knows he’s not in top form and he hasn’t been playing particularly well since he came back after getting injured in Indian Wells. Fognini, on the other hand, finds himself in one of those days where he is able to do everything he wants. The points go by, the games too, and Fognini is the only player who is really putting on a show with an extraordinary display of tennis, while Nadal falls more and more into his bad day. This Fognini today is unbeatable, relentless and the stronger one. To the extent that Nadal just about manages to avoid the extreme humiliation in tennis – a 6-0 that the world’s strongest clay court player since the Borg era could not have forecast (although, much against his will, he was convinced that he played badly, extremely badly).
But how much of this is Fognini’s credit? Surely a lot, and maybe more. Just like Panatta against Borg.
And like Panatta, Fognini does not get distracted this time – unlike all the other three times when he had inevitably lost after beating Nadal – and beats Lajovic as well, without letting himself being crushed by the pressure of not missing that apparently unique opportunity. Panatta, too, had the same kind of anguish on the eve of his winning matches with first Dibbs and then Solomon in his first great, greatest final.
He won, or rather triumphed. He won the world’s approval, everyone’s unlimited admiration, thanks to the way he won, the way he played. He notched his best ranking. And the Italian tennis movement benefitted from that achievement. While Panatta had two big victories, Fabio has one left if he is to match him. No one doubts anymore that he will get there: at 32 years old, he has finally broken the ice, and he will certainly know how to handle the pressure of being the favourite and a champion in one of the next tournaments. The Italian tennis movement – I don’t think it would be right to forget even now that too often his conduct has not lived up to his tennis – should thank him and consider itself lucky to have had for the past ten years a tennis player, a champion, like him. As already written a thousand times, the best one since the time of Panatta in a 40-year period. Adriano king of Rome, Fabio prince of Monte Carlo.
(Translation by Riccardo Superbo)
