For over fifteen years, Italian tennis has returned to shine as it did in the days of the "immortals" Lea Pericoli, Nicola Pietrangeli, Adriano Panatta and Corrado Barazzutti. First, the Italian tennis players called up to the national team exploded, winning 4 editions of the Fed Cup from 2006 to 2013 (today the trophy is called the Billie Jean King Cup).

Then in 2010 came the first success in a Slam, that of Francesca Schiavone at Roland Garros. And again in 2015, two of the protagonists of those Fed Cup victories, challenged each other for the first time in history in the final of a Slam, the US Open, with Pennetta's final victory in front of 23,000 spectators who flocked to Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York. After the cycle of successes of the female tennis players, the rise of the Italian male tennis players began.

In 2015, Fabio Fognini (who is married to Flavia Pennetta) together with Simone Bolelli, won the first doubles Slam in Italian history at the Australian Open (and the second ever, after the one won by Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola at Roland Garros in 1959). A few years later, Yannik Sinner arrived, the baby phenomenon who bewitched the American legend John McEnroe, ready to become his "super coach".

And then another tennis player literally exploded, Matteo "The Hammer" Berrettini. Born in Rome, 26 years old, in just three years he has climbed the international rankings until arriving in January 2022 at number 6, just one place behind "mister 21" Rafa Nadal, the tennis player with the highest number of Slam victories.

Berrettini has a story that revolves all around tennis. As a child, he started playing in a club in Rome but was not very convinced of his passion for this sport. He wanted to give up tennis to dedicate himself to other sports, but then his younger brother Jacopo, a tennis player of such good level as to have been for several years the sparring partner of Nadal and Djokovic, saw in him great potential and convinced him to continue.

After training for almost ten years with Raoul Pietrangeli, who is not a relative of the legendary Nicola, the only living Italian sportsman to whom a tennis stadium was named, the Nicola Pietrangeli Stadium at the Foro Italico in Rome, since 2010 he has chosen another excellent Italian tennis player, Vincenzo Santopadre, as his coach. After years of training on all surfaces, grass, clay and cement, of hard work without ever reaping great results, in 2018 he started to get noticed and in the span of only four seasons he became one of the ten strongest players in the world and one of the strongest Italians ever.

Although he has not yet won a Slam, he is the only Italian tennis player to have played the final of the Wimbledon tournament and the semi-final at the Australian Open. He was also a semifinalist at the US Open and in his career he has reached the quarter-finals in all the Grand Slam events, a feat never achieved by other Italians. But his records don't end there. In 2019, the first golden year of his career, he closed the season with the eighth place in the ATP Race, thus participating in the ATP Finals. After losing the matches with Djokovic and Federer, in the last match he won over Thiem, centering the first historical victory of an Italian in a Masters Finals match.

A complete and aggressive player, capable of violent and precise strokes on every surface, with a powerful and regular service that almost always exceeds 200 km/h with peaks of 235 km/h, Berrettini has earned the nickname "The Hammer" on the international circuit. Tennis is his life, even his private one, as he is engaged to the Croatian tennis player naturalized Australian Ajla Tomljanović. We are convinced that Berrettini will soon be able to become number one in the world, thus adding another record to Italian tennis.