One young man was narrowly denied a first match win at the Australian Open on Monday, but it wasn’t his opponent who kept him at bay.
Jannik Sinner, the red-headed 18-year-old Italian who is ranked 82 in the world, lost in the first round of a Futures event in Tunisia this time last year but has rapidly climbed the rankings to become one of the most talked about youngsters in the tennis sphere and only the Melbourne rain denied him a spot in the second round.
Sinner, a skiing champion in his youth who grew up in the mountains of South Tyrol near Austria, is the only 18-year-old in the world’s top-200 (the next highest-ranked player of that age is world No. 299 and former junior Wimbledon champion Chun-hsin Tseng) and is just two games away from a first Grand Slam main draw victory. Read more