By Andrea Mandala
Dec 1 (Reuters) – During a break in the French Open final, in 1960, Nicola Pietrangeli took his shoes off in the locker room. His socks were red with blood.
In the first three sets, Chile’s Luis Ayala had been tormenting Pietrangeli with drop shots and lobs, forcing the Italian tennis player to sprint forward and back until the skin peeled off his feet.
He played the rest of the gruelling match on raw flesh. Still, he danced across the court with the elegance of a matador — and claimed his second Roland Garros crown.
His prize money: $150, he later recalled.
Before the sport began to turn professional in 1968, and long before the vast financial rewards of modern tennis, Pietrangeli was a master on clay — and Italy’s greatest player.
“It was truly a completely different world — much less professional,” Rafael Nadal, the Spanish great, said in 2024 of that tennis era. “Yet it produced great champions like Pietrangeli, who helped our sport grow and improve in every way, both on and off the court.”
Pietrangeli died at the age of 92, the Italian tennis federation announced on its website on Monday. The cause was not immediately known. He had been in declining health following a hip fracture in December 2024.
A STAR WHO MADE TENNIS ITALIAN
Pietrangeli wasn’t just the first Italian to win a Grand Slam singles title. He was also a cultural phenomenon.
He brought tennis into the national consciousness at a time when it was still seen as a sport for the elite. With his movie-star looks, cosmopolitan charm, and a backhand that seemed to float on air, he made the game as elegant as his life was exuberant.
The Italian Tennis Federation called him “the father of our tennis movement”.
Despite his extraordinary talent he openly admitted that he was never one for rigorous practice, having shone at a time when tennis was more about passion than profit, and when charisma and joy sometimes took precedence over discipline.
“I often hear people say, ‘If you had trained more, you would have won more.’ That’s true, but I would have had much less fun,” he said during the presentation of the documentary “Nicola vs Pietrangeli” in 2024, as quoted by the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
He became a fixture of the 1960s jet set, mingling with film stars, directors and other celebrities. Among his closest friends was the famed Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. Other acquaintances included actors Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, he said.
On the court he won two French Open singles titles (1959, 1960), a doubles title (1959), and a mixed doubles title (1958).
He reached four Roland Garros finals, as well as a Wimbledon semifinal in 1960.
Throughout his career, he amassed a total of 48 titles, according to the Italian tennis federation, including two Rome Masters, in 1957 and 1961.
But he performed best in the Davis Cup, an international team event, where he played a record 164 matches and won 120 — a feat still unmatched.
TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY AT DAVIS CUP
Italy was a Davis Cup runner-up both in 1960 and 1961, while he was on the team. But it was as captain, three years after he had retired as a player, that he would finally lead the national team to victory, in 1976.
That final, against Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, was politically charged. The decision to play sparked national protests in Italy, but Pietrangeli was committed to competing despite the pressure.
Behind the scenes, tensions within the Italian team were also high, as recounted in the docuseries “Una Squadra” (A Team), shown on Netflix. Pietrangeli clashed with Adriano Panatta, Italy’s top player at the time, over leadership and strategy. Two years later he was removed from his role as captain, marking a bitter end to his involvement with the Davis Cup.
But his broader legacy remained untarnished. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1986 — the first Italian to receive that honour. “Pietrangeli had classic strokes, a conventional game plan, and an economy of effort that made him a supreme clay court player,” the Hall of Fame said.
The second largest tennis stadium within Rome’s Foro Italico sports complex was named after him in 2006 — a rare tribute for a living athlete.
FROM TUNIS TO THE WORLD STAGE
Nicola Chirinsky Pietrangeli was born on September 11, 1933, in Tunis, then a French protectorate, where his father Giulio, an Italian amateur tennis player, met and married Anna De Yourgaince, a refugee of Russian heritage.
War and displacement shaped Pietrangeli’s childhood. “I wasn’t even ten years old yet. I was great at counting warplanes just by the sound,” he recalled in his 2023 autobiography “Se piove rimandiamo” (“If it rains, we postpone”).
“One evening, three bombs fell in our garden.”
After the Allied occupation of Tunisia, during World War II, his father was interned, and young Nicola began hitting balls on a tennis court inside the prison camp.
Later expelled from Tunisia, the family settled in Rome, where he learned Italian. Until he was 19, he was far more proficient at football than tennis, he told the Roland-Garros YouTube channel in 2024. He was part of the youth team of Serie A club Lazio.
Finally he chose tennis — a sport he believed would allow him to travel more widely.
He quickly rose through the ranks. By 1952, he was playing the Italian Open. By 1959, he was a Grand Slam champion.
Yet he harbored a lifelong regret of never winning Wimbledon.
‘I MUST HAVE DESERVED IT’
He was often called a ladies’ man, a label Pietrangeli always rejected. “It was pinned on me,” he once said.
He was married for 15 years to model Susanna Artero, with whom he had three sons: Marco, Giorgio, a former surfing champion who passed away in 2025, and Filippo. After the marriage he had a seven-year relationship with Licia Colò, a well-known TV presenter.
Referring to them and to two other significant women in his life, he said: “I loved all of them. And all four left me (…) I suppose I must have deserved it.”
A bon vivant, he prioritised pleasure over rigour. “Although I have always known Nicola Pietrangeli, I’ve never asked him if he eventually regretted not giving all his attention and energy to tennis,” Italian sports commentator Rino Tommasi told A Million Steps magazine. “I never asked because I knew the answer: Nicola could not live differently, he would never say no to a party, a dinner, a woman to play a better game.”
‘I PLAYED BECAUSE I LOVED IT’
Pietrangeli never lost his appetite for the spotlight, either. In his later years, he became known for his sharp appraisals of modern tennis and its stars.
Critics accused him of being envious of the new generations, and reluctant to relinquish his status as Italy’s greatest. Pietrangeli denied these claims.
In 2024, following Italy’s Davis Cup victory, he said of then world number one, Italian player Jannik Sinner, that he was “on the right path to break all my records”. But, he added, “one remains impossible to beat: my 164 Davis Cup matches.”
In his autobiography, Pietrangeli imagined his funeral. He said he would like it to be held at “his” Pietrangeli stadium, in Foro Italico, noting that it has 3,000 seats, parking, and even a covered passage in case of rain.
Pietrangeli remained a beloved, if occasionally cantankerous, figure in Italian sport. He never stopped watching the game. Never stopped talking about it. And never stopped believing in its magic. “I never played for the money,” he once said. “I played because I loved it. And because I looked damn good doing it.”
(Editing by Olivier Holmey)
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