“Perfection can be boring. We are like the devil in comparison.”

Colleagues, teammates, musketeers and friends, Adriano Panatta And Paolo Bertolucci they were guests on Rai 3 of the program hosted by Geppi Cucciari“Beautiful Cornice”, during which the two members of Davis’ first Italian team to lift the salad bowl in 1976 talked about their friendship, talked about their way of understanding tennis and, obviously, about Jannik Sinner, who day after day is rewriting important pages in the history of Italian tennis. All obviously in their own way, complete with digs, teasing and a lot of healthy irony.

Panatta and Bertolucci talk about their friendship

Panatta And Bertolucci they are two of the exponents of that golden generation of Italian men’s tennis which in the 1970s achieved enormous successes both at an individual and team level, above all the first slam title in the Open era won by Adriano at Roland Garros 1976 and the first Davis Cup won in Chile the same year by Four Musketeers and during “Splendida Cornice” they recalled their careers and their successes, with Paolo referring to his friend saying: “He has won a few more titles than me, but he is also a year older, he started earlier”. The response was immediate Panatta: “He is seen as a great doubles player, but he was also very strong in singles, a specialty in which he won some very important tournaments, but since he was lazy and didn’t want to do anything, to train, at a certain point he stopped play”.

Bertolucci then he also reveals how they met: “I’ve been putting up with him for 60 years, we met for the first time when I was 11 and he was 12. He came from Tennis Parioli, I came from a small village in Tuscany, he already had a quiff and cheated: he said that the balls that went out were in and vice versa”.

The anecdote about the wedding gift and their way of seeing tennis

Nice anecdote told by Panatta regarding the wedding gift given to the friend: “The last embarrassing gift? A horse, I gave it to him when he got married because his wife liked them very much. Mine wasn’t generosity, I gave it to him because keeping a horse is expensive”. Regarding their way of seeing tennis, both are now very popular television commentators, Adriano instead said: “We understand tennis the same way. When Paolo does the commentary I listen to him and he expresses the same concepts that I say at home.”

The comment on Sinner

The two then talked, and even joked about it Sinner. This is the original thought of Panatta: “They are sanctifying it so much that in a little while there will be ascension. He is a very good boy, respectable, kind, polite, he never makes a mistake, he plays like a God, but enough is enough: it’s not like they have to make us feel bad about everything he does. He is just as he appears: always balanced in his statements, he never breaks rackets, he is the son that all parents would like. Perfection can sometimes be boring. Am I perfect like him? For nothing. Compared to Sinner we are like the devil and holy water”.