Winner Sinner
Hall of Fame
In a long interview granted to Sky Sport and broadcast tomorrow, Friday, the world number one in tennis Jannik Sinner celebrated a record year by recounting a truly incredible period, also for the Clostebol case. "Everyone plays tennis well, the problem is always the small details. I managed to understand many things this season and I won many matches with mental strength. I was in a very difficult and delicate situation before the US Open, for the months before, where I struggled to understand what was happening. But at a certain point I said to myself: `No Jannik, in the end it's all quite irrelevant, because this sport can give you satisfaction and can also bring you down morally, but in the end I'm fine´. Before playing in New York it was difficult first of all because I couldn't open up to many people. It was a very complicated period because I didn't know how I had to behave, personally, I didn't know what would come out, I didn't know what would happen with the team. Only that after a few weeks I woke up one morning and said: `But in the end I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't know anything, and so for me it was already over, then what comes out of the judge, what can or can't come out in the end I can no longer control, right?´". Sinner then talks about himself and his work ethic: "As a person I have never changed, success hasn't changed me and it hasn't changed how I treat the people in front of me, the ones I meet. What has changed is that I have a little less free time. Because I am a person who dedicates all his time to work. So it depends on me. If I want to go home tomorrow I can go, but I don't want to because my career started when I left home at 13 and a half. Now I'm 23 and I've reached the point I've always dreamed of: becoming number one. It's right now that you have to continue working and improving, because there are all the players who want to chase you. I'll play for another 15 years, let's hope my body holds up. People think that 15 years is a long time, but that's not the case because today I was saying to myself: This year has gone by really quickly. We are trying to make all the choices to continue playing for as long as possible, but we can't waste time either because it's a good balance of improvement, work, desire to win, to have the people you want around you and who can help you". On missing the Olympics due to tonsillitis and on priorities: "The Slams are and will always be the most prestigious tournaments for me. I had a difficult time: not playing the Olympics which were a fundamental objective for me. Now there is the Davis Cup. Future? It will be difficult to do better than this year, but let's see what happens". It was also difficult to justify to fans and insiders the lack of inclination to smile after matches: "The difficult problem was also when nothing had happened yet: I played matches and people saw me down and asked me 'But you won, why are you like this?' And I replied 'No, I'm fine, everything's fine'". "nothing happens by chance and maybe this happened to understand who is my friend and who is not. I separated these two matters. I understood that there are many players who I did not think were friends and a fairly large amount of players who I thought were friends, but who are not friends. I'm not saying it did me good, but it made me understand many things." Jannik continues, with honesty: "There were matches that the night before I did not sleep, like the one at Wimbledon against Medvedev. It's normal that then the next morning you feel bad. I tried to put many things away in this period, I have to thank my team that was close to me, I felt protected. That's why I dedicate the tournaments to them, without them I could not have overcome it. I'm happy with how I managed all this. Was I sure I was right? That's the most important thing, if I had known I was guilty I would never have played like that."
