Jannik Sinner: Ilie Nastase doesn’t mince words.

Jannik Sinner: Ilie Nastase doesn’t mince words

Former world number one Ilie Nastase spoke about Jannik Sinner in an interview with Corriere della Sera, starting with an important comparison: "He is agile, intuitive, and knows how to see the game in advance. He reminds me of Martina Hingis: she understood everything before".

Nastase didn't fail to poke a little at Blue about the Six Kings Slam he won in Saudi Arabia: "Of course when I won Paris in 1973 they gave me $15,000 and Jannik in Arabia pocketed $6 million… I console myself by thinking that it was a’performance: it doesn’t count!".

The former Romanian outfielder then drew a comparison between the current Finals and those of his time: "In the early 1970s, when it was born, the Masters was an end-of-season party, a kind of class trip around the capitals of the planet. In the evening everyone would go out to dinner. Everyone had his own style, his own personality. Today they all play tennis the same, they look like F1 cars…".

"The "strongest opponent in his career? Laver, Rosewall, Emerson, Stolle: I faced all the Australians. They taught me to play everything: singles, doubles and mixed, which I used as training. S’imagine if today they asked Sinner to play mixed doubles…?".