At 23, Jannik Sinner already has all of Italy at his feet: nothing during the ATP Masters can bring the world No. 1 down from his cloud, not even the resounding doping affair which could deprive him of Tennis in 2025.
Vague orange
What does “Sinnermania” represent, this sweet euphoria which has regularly gripped an entire country for twelve months now?
It is the orange wave that colors the stands of the Inalpi Arena in Turin when the big redhead who offered his country, in November 2023, the second Davis Cup in its history.
It’s the pink surge of the rave front pages of daily sports The Gazzetta dello Sport which relegated the sacrosanct calcio to the bottom of the page after each of its seven tournaments won in 2024.
Or maybe it's the hype of the TV spots of the numerous companies, Italian or not, seduced by the kid who came down from the mountains of South Tyrol to become the first Italian world number one in history.
It would take more to make the person concerned white as a sheet, never as formidable as when there is something at stake: in Turin, Sinner is in fact trying to correct an anomaly in his track record which currently has no title won in Italy.
“A little more pressure”
“It’s clear that there’s a little more pressure, but I’m happy to find myself in this situation for which I’ve worked so hard,” he explained with a shy smile.
As much as his successes – including his first two Grand Slam crowns, in Melbourne and New York – what appeals about Sinner is his personality, far from the exuberance of his compatriots on the ATP circuit, like Fabio Fognini, and Besides.
“He has this mental toughness. He was perhaps not the most gifted, but he hung on,” appreciates Enzo Palumbo, a forty-year-old who is preparing to see Sinner’s second group match.
Ariana Verdone and Francesco Fiscatori, red wigs on their heads and dressed in an orange t-shirt which has become the rallying color of Sinner fans, embodied by the now famous “Carota Boys”, impatiently await the first hit of their racket. hero.
“It’s an example for her investment when she had to leave her family, for her passion for tennis, for her humility,” lists the fifty-year-old who noticed that “the children around (her) were moving more towards the tennis now than football.”
He faces one to two years of suspension
“He is a nice and intelligent boy. He's like the son or son-in-law that everyone would like to have. It’s simple, he’s a simple person,” summarizes the president of the Italian Federation Angelo Binaghi.
And this simplicity works miracles. For these 2024 Masters, the organizers sold 200,000 tickets, unheard of, and could have sold double that number, or even more. In one year, their revenues increased from 20 to 28 million euros.
“A Sinner multiplies everything by ten,” even assures the boss of Italian tennis who claims five million players, compared to 4.5 in 2023.
Fifth highest paid player in the world
Sinner also benefits: according to the ranking established in August by the economic magazine Forbeshe is the fifth highest paid tennis player in the world with 26.6 million dollars, including fifteen million coming from his sponsors.
According to marketing research firm NextAtlas, “Sinnermania” has four components, the most important of which is its authenticity.
A quality that allows him to weather the storm of his case of doping with clostebol, an anabolic steroid, without major damage to the public and his sponsors.
Initially cleared by the International Agency for Tennis Integrity (Itia), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed and demanded one to two years of suspension for the Italian.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is expected to rule by the end of the year. “It's not a pleasant situation but we remain confident,” assured Sinner.
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