BREAKING Tennis icon dies as sport in mourning for three-time Grand Slam champion
Tennis icon and former Grand Slam champion Nicola Pietrangeli has died aged 92.
Pietrangeli, who had a 20-year career between 1953 and 1973, passed away in Rome on Monday. The Italian star’s health had been on the decline following a hip fracture last December.
The Italian Tennis Federation confirmed Pietrangeli’s passing with a statement – just a few months after his son, Giorgio, died aged 59 in July. It read: “Italian tennis mourns its icon. Nicola Pietrangeli, the only Italian tennis player inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, has died at the age of 92.
Federation president Angelo Binaghi told Sky Sports Italy: “Today, Italian tennis loses its greatest symbol, and I lose a friend. Nicola Pietrangeli wasn’t just a champion: he was the first to teach us what it meant to truly win, on and off the court.
“He was the starting point for everything our tennis has become. With him, we understood that we too could compete with the world, that dreaming big was no longer a gamble.
“When you mention Nicola, you immediately think of the records, the Davis Cups, the titles and triumphs that will forever remain in our history. But the truth is that Nicola was much more.
“He had a unique way of being. With his sharp wit, his free spirit, his unending desire to live and joke, he managed to make tennis something human, real, profoundly Italian.
“Conversing with him was always a delight and a surprise: you could leave a conversation laughing heartily or with a thought that lingered for days. In my office, there’s a photo that I hold dear: me as a youngster, a ball boy in a Davis Cup match in Cagliari, and in front of me, Nicola Pietrangeli.
“Every time I glance at it, I feel like I’m transported back to that day. And I realise that, in essence, everything started there for me. That photo isn’t just a memory: it’s a symbol.
“The symbol of how a child can fall in love with a sport thanks to someone who embodies it so fully and naturally. Nicola wasn’t only the greatest player in our history. He was tennis, in the deepest sense of the word.”
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