Jannik Sinner returns to tennis at the Italian Open, his fans’ fervor undimmed
ROME — The roars start to rise even before Jannik Sinner walks onto the courts at the Foro Italico, a tennis version of what unfolded Thursday below that famous door in St. Peter’s Square. The hero is back from Elba, trying to figure out in real-time how to reclaim a sport that barely slipped from his grasp during a three-month doping ban.
Sinner, the men’s world No. 1, will play a competitive tennis match again on Saturday at long last, though has it really been that long? No, and yes.
The buildup in the Italian capital has been a bit like the Sinner phenomenon itself. So much anticipation. So many eyes and cameras, following him around. The noise. The autographs. The chant, reverberating around the Foro Italico as it did at the 2024 ATP Tour Finals in Turin.
Olé, olé olé olé, Sinner, Sinner.
At the center of it all is a reserved and at times remote Italian young man, who still tells himself and everyone else the same thing. He is just a 23-year-old who is good at tennis. He cannot change the world.
Sinner often looks as if he is still trying to discern what all the fuss is about. Even now, in his nation’s most famous city, at the most important tournament for an Italian outside of the Grand Slams, and after being confirmed many times over as Italy’s new sporting avatar. Thousands of people file into stadiums or stand eight-deep around field courts to watch him practice, as he did this week in front of the public for the first time since the winter.
True to form, Sinner acknowledged them with the soft raise of a racket, the odd wave. No trick shots. No gallery plays. Nothing remotely hinting at showmanship. It was as if he had packed his briefcase, gotten on a train and sat back down at his desk after a leave.
That’s about as far from what is happening as can be. No one has ever done this before, not in this sport anyway.
A world No. 1 has never served a three-month doping ban between Grand Slams, then simultaneously tried to shake off rust and something like moral injury. Even though two anti-doping authorities and three independent tribunals ruled that Sinner did not intentionally use clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid, Sinner was still found culpable for two anti-doping violations. He bore responsibility for the actions of his team, and served the ban as a result.
“It’s completely different, because when you’re injured, you know that you cannot play a tournament,” Simone Vagnozzi, Sinner’s main coach, said in a roundtable. “It was tough for him. It was tough sometimes for us to watch other tournaments.”
Sinner couldn’t hit with another tour professional, or play on tennis courts where sanctioned tournaments take place, including his home-base country club in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He couldn’t practice at all until April 13. When he could, he used another court about a half-hour away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France.
No one likes being a pariah, especially when returning to their place of work. That’s how Sinner said he felt among some of his fellow players at the Australian Open in January, before he reached the case resolution agreement with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that reduced what could have been a one- or two-year ban to three months.
Sinner said he didn’t want to take the deal. He knew the truth, he said. He knew that the stain of an anti-doping suspension would never completely leave him. But he also knew that a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) would have less predictable and potentially graver consequences than the deal that his legal representatives reached with WADA.
“Sometimes we have to choose the best in a very bad moment,” he said this week, appearing relaxed and relieved as he faced a phalanx of journalists for the first time.
A few hours later, he was on the Foro Italico’s Campo Centrale, the main stadium court, for an hour of hitting and a practice set with Jiří Lehečka of the Czech Republic. Fans filled the lower bowl of the court and scattered about the second level.
They roared when he walked on, and applauded his winners, both during the rallies and the games. Sinner just kept hitting. He played at what looked like three-quarters speed, which is typical for pre-tournament practices. He hit plenty of his frozen-rope groundstrokes, but he also shanked some balls and clicked others off the frame of his racket. Some of that is to be expected of a comeback on an uneven surface like clay, which gives its share of bad bounces.
It was all fine, Vagnozzi said the following day. The preparations for a tournament that should be one of the highlights of the year for Sinner had not gone nearly as planned.
He had spent the first month at home relaxing and figuring out how to fill his days. The second month, he began to hit and stepped up the fitness work.
“The last few weeks, we tried a lot of training matches, which, as you know, is not the same as playing a tournament game,” Vagnozzi said in Italian. “Yesterday was a good time to play on the match court with a few people. It brought back the feeling with the atmosphere.”
Sinner did it again the next day on a court in the middle of the running track surrounded by statues used for the 1960 Olympics. There were more shanks and mishits, but also more of the Italian standing on the baseline and dealing, moving the ball from sideline to sideline and chasing balls into the corners. Still, his shots were missing that usual smacking sound, like the crack of a tree branch breaking over a metal fence post.
When he was done, and just about whenever he isn’t on a tennis court, fans pursue his autograph, or just a glimpse of him, in their droves.
Italy’s tennis federation, the FITP, has offered Sinner and his family a private room on the second level of the main stadium to get away from the noise if he needs it. President Angelo Binaghi described the construction of a “Fort Apache” for Sinner in the lead-up to the tournament, saying it would be impenetrable to the outside world. In reality, it’s just the same room that Novak Djokovic used for some privacy two years ago. Sinner has been spending time in the main player area or at his hotel, a five-minute drive away.
Sinner’s biggest rival is glad he is back. “It is great,” Carlos Alcaraz said of Sinner’s return in a news conference.
“I’m really happy to have him around again. It’s been three months. For him, it was tough and I’m pretty sure it felt super long.”
Alcaraz, who is on the opposite side of the draw to Sinner, so cannot face him until the final, has missed seeing the only other player in the men’s game who can match him at his best level.
“I’m going to enjoy watching him playing again, his matches. For the people, it is great,” he said.
Not all of Alcaraz’s comrades agree. The procedure in Sinner’s case, including the confidentiality of the two provisional suspensions that he quickly and successfully appealed, has been done to protocol, but multiple players have suggested that Sinner received special treatment from the beginning. They have complained about how quickly the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) handled his case. They have complained that the deal he received was nine months shorter than the minimum sentences proscribed for someone found to have “no significant fault or negligence” for testing positive for a banned substance, rather than “no fault or negligence.”
As Sinner practiced with American No. 1 Taylor Fritz Wednesday in front of the hordes, Karen Moorhouse, the chief executive of the ITIA, sat a few hundred yards away at a picnic table. A year ago, its investigators were interviewing Sinner and his team. Sinner had skipped the tournament because of a hip injury.
Moorhouse said during an interview that she had no regrets about how her agency handled the case. Through the experience, though, she became aware of how novel it was in tennis, especially since it involved a megastar. She was unprepared for how unprepared other people in the sport were to understand its intricacies.
“This case landed so cold,” Moorhouse said. “If there had been another one like it, people would have been much more ready for it. The sport is in a different place now.”
Iga Świątek’s positive test for trimetazidine, another banned substance, and the one-month suspension she received after proving that it came from a contaminated melatonin supplement only made that shift more dramatic. More players, Moorhouse said, understand the need to exercise the utmost caution about the medications and substances they and the people around them use.
Include Sinner in that group, though Vagnozzi said tennis is once more his main concern. He called what he is going through now, whether that is a cold shoulder from some players or shaking off the rust, a “passeggiata,” or evening stroll, compared to what he went through last year.
He said the last quality that he expects to return is the sensation that the best players have of competing on instinct, playing rather than plotting their way through matches. Świątek, whose 6-1, 6-1 defeat against Coco Gauff in their Madrid Open semi-final last week was her worst on clay since 2019, calls it intuition.
“It’s to feel some automation on court,” Vagnozzi said. “When you play a lot of matches, now you go on court and you don’t think too much.”
That’s not where Sinner is right now, especially on clay, which may be his least comfortable surface, given his ball-striking capabilities on more predictable hard courts. Before his opening match against Argentina’s Mariano Navone, who prefers clay above all else, his coach is grounded.
“Jannik has to accept something,” Vagnozzi said. “The clay game is completely different.”
He’s not going to hit as many winners. The ground will slow the ball and pop it into the air, making free points from his serve far rarer.
“It’s a mindset,” he said.
For Sinner, just about everything is these days.
(Top photos: Piero Cruciatti, Andrea Staccioli, Insidefoto / AFP and Insidefoto via Getty Images; Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic)
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Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, "The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour," to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman
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Folks, Get..over...it... Put yourself in Sinner's shoes. You are 21 years old, yes you have lots of money and advisors, but you are not a full adult and you are not perfect. You trust the older experienced individuals who have helped you succeed. Someone close to you who you trust lets you down. The factual information speaks for itself: it was a microscopic amount (actually I think it would technically be a picoscopic amount) of a banned substance. Totally irrelvant biologically. Multiple reviews found that there was no intent for this picoscopic amount to be used maliciously or for advantage -- it was an error. The problem is not with the player (are any of us so perfect?). It's with the absurd level of punishment considered for such a mild and irrelevant infraction. It's a small piece of how tennis sabotages it popularity through a moralistic tyranny. In pro US football, I think you can get as little as a 4 game (25% of the season) suspension for *intentionally doping for real*. Not advocating for that, but tennis is also a brutal and wearing sport in its own right. No I happen to love watching Sinner play (and Alcaraz, and Rune, and Shelton, and Draper - so many great young dynamic players). If you don't like Sinner, just own up to it, but give me a break with the moralizing. Don't you want to see as many compelling dynamic players competing at as many tournaments as possible?
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FORZA JANNIK!!!!!!!!!!
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alè alè alè Sinner Sinner
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