Nicola Pietrangelihe The first Italian tennis player to win a Grand Slam tournament and Captain of the team that led Italy to win the Davis Cup in 1976, He died on Monday at the age of 92.. This was confirmed by the Italian Tennis and Paddle Federation (FITP): “Italian tennis mourns its idol”. The former athlete had declared months ago in an interview: “I defeated cancer, but not old age.”
Pietrangeli He won Roland Garros twice, in 1959 and 1960, and holds the record for having played the most Davis Cup matches, with a total of 164.. And until 2023, the year in which Davis’ Italian era began with three successive victories, the only “bowl power” was achieved by the team led by the ref.
He is considered an Italian tennis legend, and he also won the Rome Championship twice. He won a total of 48 titles during his career.Among them is a medal at the Fourth Mediterranean Games in which he beat Spaniard Manolo Santana in the final in Naples in 1963.
“Italian tennis is losing its greatest icon and I have lost a friend,” said Angelo Benaghi, president of FITP, as reported by Italian media. “Pietrangeli was not just a hero: he was the first to teach us what winning really meant, on and off the court. He was the starting point for everything that was our tennis. With him, we learned that we can also compete with the world, and that dreaming big is no longer just something random.”
Recently, the former tennis player had to go through moments of great sadness. In the middle of this year, his son Giorgio, 59 years old, a prominent surfer, died of a serious illness. Moreover, he was suffering from many physical ailments. The Italian said in an interview with a local media outlet: “I would like to live a day without pain. Because I suffer from constant pain in the sacral area that prevents me from moving. They have tried everything. No, with this pain it is permanent, there is no moment of rest.”
In 1963, after the Open Republic Championship in Buenos Aires in which Pietrangeli participated, they traveled along the country’s roads with Enrique Morea to hold exhibitions in Santa Fe, Mendoza, Cordoba, and Rosario. And he had a lot too Friendship with Tato Soriano, Guillermo Vilas and José Luis Sweet potatoes writer.
In 2014, Pietrangeli visited Argentina to participate in the Davis Cup series between Italy and the national team. Who was the leader at that time Martin Gate: The Europeans won 3-1 in Mar del Plata.
During an interview with this newspaper, he mentioned that he received 150 US dollars for losing in the Roland Garros final in 1961, and that he used this amount to pay for dinner for his executioner by Parisian definition, the Spanish Manolo Santana, and his wife. “We made a bet and whoever loses will pay tonight. We went to dinner together after the final. See if this isn’t romantic tennis…”
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