Time.news – What happened to the women’s squadron that won four Fed Cup, the last eight years ago, and also two Slam titles, Francesca Schiavone in Paris and Flavia Pennetta in New York after a final played against Roberta Vinci? If in the men’s sector we have ten tennis players among the top 100 in the world and almost three among the top 20 (the new idol Sinner is 23), the pink tennis plate is crying a lot today, with only two tennis players among the top hundred: one, the Giorgi, is 80 and the other, the Trevisan, it is 99. With the Paolini which is 103, between the hundredth and the two hundredth ranking position Wta, the blue tennis players are just four: the Trevisan more Cocciaretto (111), Errani (112), Cat Monticone (177).
And now that the poor Giorgi it tested positive at Covid (he’s in solitary confinement in Charleston, where he had to forfeit the tournament) for replace it in the prohibitive match with Romania (which field SIMON Halep, number 3 of ranking) scheduled for April 16 and 17, the captain of Fed Cup Tathiana Garbin had to scrape the bottom of the standings, calling the twenty three Bianca Turati, number 281 of ranking, at his debut in blue.
© Afp
Sara Errani
Sara remains in the game of the fierce but now ancient team led by Schiavone and Pennetta Errani, a veteran of painful doping events, who played well Australian Open and is determined to leave the scene only after clearing that dark page. But the rest? That legacy has been lost.
Of course: the current boom in men’s tennis shows that there is an undulatory movement in tennis talent. certain place and not in another. And there they find fertile ground to grow. Just think about the current moment of American men’s tennis where the most high-sounding names are those of Fritz e Tiafoe: not exactly Connors, Agassi O McEnroe.
Camila Giorgi (Facebook)
But the fact remains that nothing has been preserved of the heritage that Schiavone, Vinci and Pennetta represented. Schiavone deals with other things in life and with Italian tennis there have been deep misunderstandings, Pennetta is the mother and shadow coach of her husband Fabio Fognini. For Vinci, there was talk of a basic technical role: nothing was done.
The result is that the most important Italian player today is Camila Giorgi, that, bad luck from Covid aside, she is an eternal unfinished who seems more determined to create photo books in sexy underwear to delight her followers on Instagram than to win tournaments. Despite the passionate work that the captain does Garbin, Trevisan e Cocciaretto they have to deal with physical limits that penalize them in a tennis where physicality counts.
But most of all there is no single talent on the horizon that alone could drive the entire movement. And this is what strikes most: it is as if the magic blows of Schiavone and Vinci or the crazy competition that Pennetta showed in the second phase of her career had not been picked up by anyone. Is the responsibility only of the waves that first lap a certain country and then leave it dry? Who knows.
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