Those in Italy might be torn, however.
“Of course right now Jannik is becoming really, really important in Italy,” Paolo Lorenzi, tournament director in Rome, told TENNIS.com on a nippy day at Wimbledon that saw only the hearty don short sleeves. “A lot of people support him, but they cannot forget what Matteo did. He made some unbelievable results.
“So I don’t know who they will cheer for, but I think they will enjoy a lot.”
“Everybody was hoping they would be in separate halves of the draw because both have a chance to go much further, so this is the worst draw possible,” added Ubaldo Scanagatta, an author and journalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of Italian tennis. He has covered the sport for 50 years.
“Everyone in Italy was very, very sorry.”
It won’t be the first time Italians tangle in a Grand Slam—more precisely, it’s the seventh time among the men at Wimbledon—but not many encounters of the past match its allure. One that certainly did, as acknowledged by Lorenzi and Scanagatta, came when Flavia Pennetta met Roberta Vinci in the 2015 US Open final. Both sought a maiden Grand Slam crown, with Pennetta bettering her childhood friend the round after the sprightly Vinci ended Serena Williams’ hopes of achieving a calendar-year Grand Slam.
