Scanagatta sees a more subtle tilting point: Marco Cecchinato’s 2018 race in the semi-finals of Roland Garros.
“All the players who played with Cecchinato (now 32 years old) and perhaps beat him on the training field or in a minor tournament, they thought:” Oh, if he can do it, then we can do it too. “,” Said Scanagatta. This group included Matteo Berrettini, Fabio Fognini, Lorenzo Sonego and Andreas Seppi (Sinner was a year from his season in small groups).
At that time, changes long-awaited in the way the development of players administered by the Italian Tennis Federation (FEU) was in progress. Angelo Binaghi, president of The Fit since 2001 (he is still in office) dragged his feet for most of a decade, but finally gave in to calls for reform, in particular by loosening the centralized hold of the federation, among others, high performance training.
The adjustment finally began to look beyond the limited group of young oint players by initiates of the federation who had always insisted that it was the way of adequacy or the highway. Financial subsidies, high -quality instruction and technical expertise have been made available to “private” players and their teams. Berrettini, Sonego, Lorenzo Musetti and others were allowed to continue to train with coaches of their choice, including many of those who had been the main coaches of young people.
“None of them came out as a product of the Italian Tennis Federation,” said Scanagatta about these stars (this also applies to the sinner). “They all came individually, helped by private teams.”
