Roland Garros yesterday and today. "Musetti can threaten Sinner and Alcaraz". Panatta speaks

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In 1976, Adriano Panatta “walked on water,” as l’Équipe wrote , with his velvet strokes, his veronicas, his attacking tennis, his all-Italian charm that turned the heads of the Parisian women. 1976 was the year in which Panatta won Roland Garros, at the end of two euphoric weeks in which he had saved a match point with a diving volley, beaten Borg once again and achieved the Rome-Paris double, the Italian Internationals and the French Internationals.

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the conquest of Paris. “I remember those two weeks with a smile. They were beautiful moments,” Adriano Panatta tells Il Foglio. “For us Mediterraneans, Latins, Europeans let’s say, Roland Garros is the most important Slam. In Europe, apart from England, it has always been played on clay: for us Italians, for the Spanish and obviously the French, Roland Garros is The Tournament. Even more than Wimbledon. Of course Wimbledon is The Championships, it has a name, it has an allure, as they say in France, but it is played on a very bizarre surface,” jokes Panatta. Last Sunday, the French Tennis Federation and Roland Garros paid homage to Rafael Nadal with the honors he deserved for his fourteen Coupe des Mousquetaires, organizing a ceremony on Philippe Chatrier, the center court of Roland Garros. “It was the right tribute to a great champion who made history on those courts. And then he is such a good and polite boy . I think no one will win fourteen Roland Garros again,” says Panatta.

Italian tennis is experiencing a magical moment, it has the world number one in the ATP ranking, Jannik Sinner, and immediately behind him a guy who last year won the bronze medal at the Paris Olympics, has just entered the top 10 and for Panatta has all the qualities to do even better: Lorenzo Musetti. “Already today on clay if Musetti plays like he played in Rome, Madrid and Monte Carlo he is among the top three or four in the world. On clay he can cause problems for Sinner and Alcaraz” , assures Panatta, before adding: “Flavio Cobolli is also making great progress. He just won the Hamburg tournament, which is an ATP 500, in the final against Rublev: that is no small thing”.

Today, tennis is a popular sport in Italy, with an increase in memberships in clubs every year, and Adriano, the son of the caretaker of the Circolo Parioli in Rome, started this popularization process in the 1970s: he invented a country of tennis players. “I am happy that tennis is increasingly popular. My Davis Cup teammates (Paolo Bertolucci, Corrado Barazzutti and Antonio Zugarelli, ed.) and I have cleared tennis from an elite sport to a popular sport, we have put the racket in the hands of people who had never thought of playing tennis. We were a bit of a precursor, and I am proud of it,” Panatta tells Il Foglio.

Davis Cup captain Nicola Pietrangeli told Parisian magazine 40-A that he knew “more discos than tennis courts.” “The Crazy Horse was my office. At the time, I would go back and forth between Castel and Régine: I would go to Chez Régine for Régine and Chez Castel for Jacques,” Pietrangeli added. “Chez Castel has always been a point of reference in Paris. We would go there for dinner because it was also a restaurant. Then some would stop for the disco, but if we played the next day we wouldn’t stay late,” Panatta said. Everyone except American Vitas Gerulaitis, nicknamed “Broadway Vitas,” who was engaged to the night and was reportedly at Chez Castel until the early hours of the morning on the eve of his defeat in the Roland Garros final to Borg in 1980. “Vitas was a night owl,” Panatta recalls, before adding: “Chez Régine was also a wonderful place, we went there if we had the chance.”

Last January 18, while the Australian Open was taking place, won by Sinner, Panatta ironically commented on X about the outfits of some tennis players: “But I ask myself, don’t all these players dressed in singlets look like lifeguards instead of tennis players?”. “I confirm, they look like lifeguards, they dress in an improbable way. Often, however, the players have little to do with it, it’s the sponsors who push. I also played with colors, but I would never have dressed like this,” Panatta told Foglio, he who in the Seventies was also a champion of style with his elegant Fila polo shirts and his rebellious quiff. Only the grammar of white of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club stops the plague of the singlet. “As soon as they walk through the gates of Wimbledon, they put on all white. They act so cool, then they go in there and stand to attention, otherwise they won’t let them play,” Panatta told Foglio with his usual Gascon style.

This weekend, like every year during Roland Garros, he will make a stop in Paris, “a city that is always special to me.” “It is the city that I love most in Europe after Rome,” Panatta concludes, “and where I would gladly live.”

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