Jannik Sinner returns to tennis at the Italian Open, his fans fervor unimperated

Rome the roar starts to rise, even before Jannik Sinner walks up the courts in the Foro Italico, a tennis version of what unfolded on Thursday under that famous door on St. Peters Square. The hero is back from Elba and tries to find out in real time how to reclaim a sport that hardly slid out of his grasp during a three -month doping ban.

Sinner, The Mens World No. 1, will on Saturday finally play a competitive tennis match, although it has really been so long? No, and yes.

The structure in the Italian capital is a bit on the phenomenon of the sinner himself. So much expectation. So many eyes and cameras that follow him. The sound. The signatures. The singing, reflecting around the Foro Italico as it did on the ATP Tour Finals in 2024 in Turin.

Ol, ol ol, sinner, sinner.

In the middle of all this is a reserved and sometimes remote Italian young man, who still tells himself and everyone else the same. He is only a 23-year-old who is good at tennis. He can't change the world.

Sinner often looks like he is still trying to distinguish what all the fuss is about. Even now, in its most famous city, at the most important tournament for an Italian outside the Grand Slams, and after being confirmed many times as Italys New Sporting Avatar. Thousands of people serve in stadiums or are eight deep around field fields to see him practice, as he did for the public this week for the first time since the winter.

True to shape, Sinner recognized them with the soft raise of a racket, the strange wave. No trick shots. No gallery plays. Nothing indicates remotely to Showmanship. It was as if he had packed his suitcase, stepped on a train and sat down behind his desk after a leave.

That is about what happens as can be. Nobody has ever done this before, not in this sport.

A World No. 1 has never served a three -month doping ban between Grand Slams, and then tried to shake off rust and something like moral injury. Although two anti-doping authorities and three independent grandstands ruled that Sinner Clostebol did not deliberately used a forbidden anabolic steroid, the sinner was still culpable for two anti-doping violations. He was responsible for the actions of his team and served the prohibition as a result.

It is completely different, because if you are injured, you know you can't play a tournament, Simone Vagnozzi, the most important coach of sinners, said in a round table. It was difficult for him. It was sometimes difficult for us to watch other tournaments.

Sinner could not touch another tour professional, or play on tennis courts where sanctioned tournaments take place, including his home base club in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He could not practice at all until April 13. When he could, he used another court about half an hour away in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France.

Nobody likes to be a pariah, especially when they return to their workplace. That is how Sinner said that he felt under 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 could have been a ban of one or two years, up 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 leave him completely. But he also knew that a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) would have less predictable and potentially more serious consequences than the deal that reached its legal representatives with WADA.

Sometimes we have to choose the best at a very bad time, he said this week, seem relaxed and relieved when he was first confronted with a Falanx of journalists.

A few hours later he was at the Foro Italicos Campo Centrale, the Capitalion Court, for an hour of hitting and an exercise with Ji Leheka of the Czech Republic. Fans filled the lower bowl of the field and spread over the second level.

Jannik Sinners -fans have filled his practice sessions, hoping for a glimpse of their sports hero. (Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty images)

They roared when he walked on and applauded his winners, both during the rallies and the competitions. Sinner just kept beating. He played with what looked at three-quarters speed, which is typical of pre-tournament practices. He hit a lot of his frozen rope foundations, but he also shot a few balls and clicked on others from the framework of his racket. Part of it is to be expected from a comeback on an uneven surface such as clay, which gives its share of bad bounces.

It was all good, Vagnozzi said the next day. The preparations for a tournament that should be one of the highlights of the year for Sinner had not been as planned.

He had spent the first month at home with relaxing and figuring out how he could fill his days. The second month he started beating and stepped up the fitness work.

In recent weeks we have tried many training matches, which, as you know, is not the same as playing a tournament lady, Vagnozzi said in Italian. Yesterday was a good time to play with a few people at the match court. It brought the feeling back with the atmosphere.

The next day, Sinner did it again at a court in the middle of the career surrounded by images used for the 1960 Olympic Games. There were more shafts and accident, but also more of the Italian standing on the baseline and acting, moving the ball from sidelines and haunting balls in the corners. Yet his shots were missing that usual smacking sound, such as the crack of a tree branch that broke over a metal fence post.

When he was ready, and almost when he is not on a tennis court, fans follow his signature, or just a glimpse of him, in their throws.

Italys Tennis Federation, the FITP, has offered Sinner and his family a private room on the second level of the capital to get away from the noise if he needs it. President Angelo Binaghi described the construction of a Fort Apache for Sinner in the run -up to the tournament and said it would be impenetrable to the outside world. In reality, it is just the same room that Novak Djokovic used for some privacy two years ago. Sinner spent time in the main player or in his hotel, five minutes' drive.

The greatest rival of sinners is happy that he is back. It's great, said Carlos Alcaraz about sinners who return to a press conference.

I am really happy to have him in the area again. It was three months ago. It was difficult for him and I am pretty sure it felt super long.

Alcaraz, who is on the other side of the Sinner draw, so he cannot be confronted with the final, has missed the only other player in the men's game who can match him at his best level.

I like to see how he plays again, his matches. For people it is great, he said.

Not all Alcarazs comrades agree. The procedure in the sinner business, including the confidentiality of the two preliminary suspensions that he quickly and successfully appealed, was done to protocol, but several players have suggested that Sinner has received special treatment from the start. They complained about how quickly the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) dealt with its business. They complained that the deal he received was nine months shorter than the minimum penalties that were forbidden for someone who has not found significant Error or negligence for positive testing on a forbidden substance, rather than no error or negligence.

While Sinner sat with the American Nr. 1 Taylor Fritz for the hordes, Karen Moorhouse, the Chief Executive of the Itia, on Wednesday, a few hundred meters away was at a picnic table. A year ago the researchers interviewed Sinner and his team. Sinner had skipped the tournament due to a hip injury.

Moorhouse said during an interview that she did not regret how her desk was dealing with the business. Because of the experience, however, she became aware of how new it was in tennis, especially because it was a megastar. She was not prepared for how unprepared other people were in the sport to understand the intricacies of it.

This case landed so cold, Moorhouse said. If there had been one, people would have been much more for it. The sport is now in a different place.

Iga Witse's positive test for trimetazidine, another forbidden substance and the suspension of one month she received after she had proven that it came from a polluted melatonin supplement, that shift only made it more dramatic. More players, Moorhouse said, understand the need to practice the greatest caution about the medicines and substances that they and the people around them use.

Include Sinner in that group, although Vagnozzi said tennis is again his greatest concern. He called what he is going through now, whether it is a cold shoulder of some players or the rust, a Passeggiata or evening walk, compared to what he went through last year.

Jannik Sinner missed Italian open last year with injury. (Tiziana Fabi / AFP via Getty images)

He said that the last quality he expects to return is the sensation that the best players have to compete on instinct, to play instead of making their way through competitions. Witek, whose 6-1, 6-1 defeat against Coco Gauff in their Madrid Open Semi-Final last week last week was her worst on Clay since 2019, calls intuition.

It is to feel some automation on the field, Vagnozzi said. If you play a lot of matches, you now go on the field and you don't think too much.

That is not where Sinner is now, especially on clay, which is perhaps at least comfortable surface, given his ball-solid capacities on more predictable hard courts. His coach was founded for his opening match against Argentinas Mariano Navone, who preferred clay.

Jannik has to accept something, Vagnozzi said. The clay game is completely different.

He is not going to touch that many winners. The ground will slow down the ball and pop into the air, making free points of his serve much rarer.

It's a mentality, he said.

Nowadays there is just about everything for Sinner.

(Top photos: Piero Cruciatatti, Andrea Staccioli, InsidePoto / AFP and inside photo via Getty images; Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The athletics)