Paolo Bertolucci comments on Jannik Sinner’s Madrid debut.
Paolo Bertolucci comments on Jannik Sinner's Madrid debut
Paolo Bertolucci, one of the iconic men of Italian tennis who won the 1976 Davis Cup, later a non-player captain of the Italian team and now a commentator, commented in his usual editorial in the Gazzetta dello Sport on Jannik Sinner’s Madrid Masters 1000 debut against Lorenzo Sonego. Here are Bertolucci’s words.
“Jannik Sinner’s Madrid debut after 10 days of hard preparation ahead of clay-court engagements could have raised some fears. Indeed, it happens that in these situations one loses a bit of fluency, one feels tacked up, with some difficulty in responsiveness in the feet, with the ball flowing less and perhaps with less sensitivity. There was, in addition, the unknown of the derby although, as the numbers say (we are at 13 wins), derbies gas it even more.
“È while it is true that Sonego’s resistance è was very bland: perhaps he wanted to try to seize the opportunity, but è entered the court blocked, playing a first set that slipped away in a few minutes while in the second the reaction was not there. Demerits of Sonego but the “faults” are magnified when on the’other side you find an opponent who wipes you out with derisory ease”.
“Sinner, now, needs more probing tests, he needs more complicated matches but playing on the’high ground has already helped him: having a better response on clay makes it easier for him as he goes through this tournament and the next few weeks. When you get to be in the top 2-3 in the world it means you have several gears up, and the difference with opponents è so wide that the player has to find a terrible day and the opponent has to play the game of life to have a resounding result. It rarely happens, that is, unless you have patched up the condition as è happened to the Greek Tsitsipas who did two Sundays in a row well and then paid the consequences”.
“In this sense, scheduling è always been a strength of Jannik, who understood very early on how to move and how to calibrate moments well. Striking while the iron is hot è è a huge nonsense in my opinion: you need tournaments but you also need moments of preparation, and well Jannik has done to work because è from now and until Paris è it’s all a stretch. I am not surprised about this Sinner who has planned perfectly. One cannotò be at the top all the time, but in these six wonderful months he è managed to manage himself the best”.
“In Monte Carlo è he arrived a bit’ tired after the American interlude and did well to train and recover. Playing 2-3 tournaments, training and then of new tournaments: è this is the winning strategy, a kind of ‘stop and go’: a system that taught Roger Federer, something different from striking while the iron is è hot. Sinner chose Madrid to regain his match rhythm and loosen up after the work done with his sights set on Rome and Roland Garros. The first feedback è positive, the rest we will see day by day. Against Sonego he convinced me not so much because heé won easily, but because heé è already in good condition. The answer he needed è came”.
