Football crazy Italy now obsessed with Jannik Sinner after his Australian Open title

Football-mad Italy has a new obsession. Jannik Sinner’s performance on the tennis court has captured the country’s attention.
And not just for the way Sinner rallied from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev and win the Australian Open title on Sunday.
Ever since Sinner reached the ATP Finals championship match at home in Turin and then led Italy to the Davis Cup title on consecutive weeks in November, he’s been taking over the headlines from football.
“Jannik Sinner wrote a new page of history today that fills us with pride,” Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni wrote on Facebook. “It’s an achievement worthy of a real champion.”
The Turin final was the most watched tennis match of all time on Italian television, with 6.7 million viewers. It wouldn’t be surprising if Sunday’s match turns out to have an even bigger audience, even though it was shown only on Pay TV, starting at 9:30 a.m., in Sinner’s home country.
It’s a testament to the 22-year-old Sinner’s clean-cut image, his ability to always say the right thing and act properly.
“I’ve never seen such a great yet simple champion,” Andrea Abodi, Italy’s Sports Minister, wrote on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
“I’m happy and honored that he’s Italian.”
The attention is also due to the fact that no Italian man had won a Grand Slam singles title in nearly a half-century — since Adriano Panatta raised the French Open trophy in 1976.“And trust me, this is just the first of many Grand Slam finals,” said Flavia Pennetta, the last Italian woman to win a Grand Slam after beating compatriot Roberta Vinci in the 2015 US Open final.
Not since Valentino Rossi was dominating motorcycle racing, Marco Pantani was the world’s top cyclist or Alberto Tomba was winning Olympic skiing medals has a non-football athlete gained so much attention in Italy.
What’s different about Sinner from Rossi, Pantani and Tomba is that Sinner is from a German-speaking area of Italy.
He left home for the Italian Riviera to train with Riccardo Piatti, now his former coach, at the age of 13.
When Sinner opted not to play Davis Cup for Italy in the September group phase saying he had not recovered in time from tournaments in North America, including the US Open he was widely criticized with an underlying sentiment that he was not fully Italian.
The criticism quickly died down when Sinner went on his late season tear and almost single-handedly earned Italy its first Davis Cup title since 1976 by beating Novak Djokovic in both singles and doubles in the semifinals against Serbia and then clinching the decisive singles point in the final against Australia. (AP)