“As soon as I got there, I started crying”: Jannik Sinner recalls leaving home at 13 to pursue tennis dream
ATPTuesday, 20 February 2024 at 10:00
Reigning Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner recently clinched the title in Rotterdam, during which he took some time to reminisce about his tennis journey starting from when he left home as a teenager to begin his career as a professional tennis player.
A native of the Italian village of Sexten, Sinner moved to Bordighera to train at Riccardo Piatti's tennis academy at the age of 13. Piatti was coaching Canadian tennis player Milos Raonic at the time, after having worked with Novak Djokovic, Ivan Ljubicic, and Richard Gasquet.
Sinner recalls the difficulty of leaving his parents at a young age
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the 22-year old opened up on the emotions he experienced when he left his mother Siglinde and father Johann.
"It was tough for them [my parents] too," admitted Sinner. "I was 13 and a half years old, and the truth is that as soon as I got there I started crying, I called them after two hours. "They must have thought, 'Here, we have to go get him'. Instead, I told him to be calm, that everything was fine.
"I was lucky enough to stay in a fantastic family, that of Luka Cvjetkovic: there were two children and also a dog. I was happy, I'd never had a dog before."
"I was lucky enough to stay in a fantastic family, that of Luka Cvjetkovic: there were two children and also a dog. I was happy, I'd never had a dog before."
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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