Jannik Sinner as a child, the lesson of the player with red hair

Looking at the video that is circulating on social media in these hours and thinking about what he did and thinking about the words he said commenting on his feat, one might say that it is precisely by these details that a champion is judged. Or a virtuous young man on whose talent it is beautiful to have placed our passion. In the case of Jannik Sinner – it is him we are talking about – the two things – champion and virtuous young man – coincide, they are summed up in the same outline, apparently so fragile and yet so solid.

The story of the video is this. There is a child playing tennis. On red clay, in a youth tournament in Ragusa. The child is twelve years old, with red hair caressing his shoulders and a hat pulled down on his head. In the mechanical gesture of the serve or the forehand from the baseline, no one – but absolutely no one – would be able to grasp the spark of the future. The child is certainly good, and indeed wins the final against his opponent, but at that age it's too early for anything and trusting a budding talent is often a gamble. We then discover that we are in theOctober 2013, that is the Under 12 final of the Nike Junior Tour event and Jannik Sinner wins 6-3 6-1. But these are marginal details that ultimately matter very little.

What has to happen, happens eventually. Having obtained the last point and won the match, Jannik waits for his little colleague at the net, shakes his hand and walks towards someone positioned beyond the fence. In all likelihood it is his coach, the commentator of the event hypothesizes that his parents are also there. There is no loud celebration, not an arm raised in victory, not even a scream or a dance, perhaps copied from the TV. Nothing at all. It's clear that it's not in his character, he's just not made for these things.

For little Sinner, tennis is still a game, it's already a job. Meanwhile the stands empty, everyone leaves. The boy with red hair, however, doesn't. He remains, with the air of someone who is used to doing certain things, he takes the brush that is used in tennis to clean the puffs of red clay from the court and begins to go up and down. Cleans the playing field. Set up your desk before turning off your computer and leaving the office. The same thing. Humility. Education. Discipline. Talent is nothing without all this. It's a frill, not an engine. Sense of duty, respect for the context in which one is placed. So Jannik Sinner, at the age of twelve. It would be easy to dismiss the video with one click and then move on to something else. Instead we like to think that everything was already there, it was all already written and it was written well, in a clean and virtuous manner. It is from these details that we judge a champion, it is from these details that we judge a young man who makes us Italians proud of him.