Hair as white as his shirts tennis and eyes as clear as his class, the timeless photo of Nicholas Pietrangeli shines in the pantheon of the sport Italian. And now that the greatest Italian tennis player of all time is reaching 90 years of age (he turns 11 on September XNUMXth) the image that shines makes him the perfect testimonial of professional sports lived in a healthy way, on the court and especially off it.
Pietrangeli is surrounded by general admiration, because he is a champion capable of going far beyond competitiveness, becoming a symbol of eclecticism and a cover character even in the jet set without ever even touching the vulgar effect. And so, while an autobiography is coming out, Rome and Italian sport are preparing the celebrations.
Two great enemies of sports politics, the president of CONI, have also agreed on a sort of Olympic truce for him. Giovanni Malago, and that of the tennis federation, Angelo Binaghi: together they will organize a toast for the birthday at the Salone d'onore of the Foro Italico, then in the evening a big party in a Roman club, where many, from various sectors of society, aspire to be invited. On the other hand, Pietrangeli boasts transversal records: an excellent tennis player, he has the satisfaction of having won his world championship as a non-playing captain, bringing to Italy despite the controversies and the contrary winds the famous Davis Cup of 1976.
The old central field of the Foro Italico, a club where he still spends much of his time, was named after him during his lifetime. A man of many talents, Pietrangeli has always intertwined his life with the world of football, training for years and with good results with Lazio and Roma. In alternating tennis balls with football, he made a winning move in the early 5s, inventing with a group of friends what is now called five-a-side football or Futsal, thus giving generations of Italians an opportunity to play team and play sports.
So much so that this year the organizers awarded him the Bearzot Lifetime Achievement Award, the first outside the football bench circuit. In short, Pietrangeli is an all-round quality brand. But there is no doubt that tennis remains his home, built on victories and elegant shots: red clay was his favorite surface, where he could show off a soft game enriched by a beautiful backhand and volley.
It was the sign of class in a sport that had not yet invented the two-handed shot or physicality, and that still dressed everything immaculately. Pietrangeli, however, also had great athleticism, and those who drew up the international rankings credited him with third place in the world for three years, between '59 and '61. He played fifty matches at the Foro, but his real record is that of the matches played in the Davis Cup: 164 matches with 78 successes in singles and 42 in doubles (with Orlando Sirola he formed one of the couples that have now become legendary).
His competitive fame, more than the two Italian Internationals he won (in 1957 and 1961 with 22 participations), is linked to the two successes at Roland Garros, in 1959 and 1960. That of a playboy, because there is also this in his character, to the relationships (one also with the TV journalist Licia Colò) experienced after a very long marriage that gave him three children.
“But my reputation as a womanizer is unfounded” he often told “among other things I only cheated on my wife abroad.” As if the extraterritoriality of feelings existed, but the dialectical double fault was forgiven partly because the sentence was pronounced when political correctness did not exist and partly because it was he who was speaking.
The second victory in Paris and the one in Chile in Davis in 1976, “they were the two unforgettable moments of my life”, he often repeats. Also because that Davis Cup victory was due to the Panatta-Barazzutti-Bertolucci-Zugarelli quartet, but above all to his stubborn battle to stem the public opinion's rejection of his trip to Pinochet's Chile, which even cost him death threats.
In Paris he reached the final two more times, in 1961 and 1964, in Rome also in 1958 and 1966. Even at Wimbledon his results remain among the best of the Italian players: 18 his participations, with a semifinal played in 1960, when he was defeated by Rod Laver in 5 sets. He was Italian champion consecutively from 1955 to 1960. Ten years later at the Assoluti in Bologna the defeat against Adriano Panatta - with whom he was linked by a deep disagreement - was a handover.
Since then, he has carved out a role for himself as the noble father of Italian tennis. A nice revenge for Nicola Chirinsky Pietrangeli, born in Tunis in '33 to an Italian father and a Russian refugee mother (from whom legend has it that he learned Orthodox prayers, with which he sometimes confused his opponents on the court). He arrived in Rome at the age of five.
The kids called him Er Francia because he spoke French, but then he chose to remain Roman and Italian, building a myth that led him to enter the international tennis Hall of Fame, to act with Virna Lisi and Peter Ustinov, to host a Domenica Sportiva.
“I have no remorse, regrets yes”, his motto, to which he adds “for example, I should have been smarter with money.” It may be true, the fact is that his 90 years have been marked by a sweet life born from another tennis. And if you think about it, from another Italy.
EDITORIAL TEAM
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