Two ‘frontier’ lives and a land left as children in the name of a dream. But Jannik Sinner and his first opponent at the ATP Finals, Alex De Minaur, have much more in common. Starting with their restaurateur fathers: Hanspeter, a cook at the Talschlusshütte refuge in Val Fiscalina. Anibal, the Australian’s father worked at Giovanni – not even on purpose – an Italian restaurant on George Street in Sydney. We could spend hours here talking about how that Uruguayan boy met his mother Esther Roman, giving life to the little phenomenon also praised by Leyton Hewitt. But here it’s the roots that count, how today’s opponent (at 20,45:2 pm on Rai XNUMX and Sky) of Jannik was born. A globetrotter, who left Australia and arrived at a tender age in Alicante, Spain, where they immediately put a racket in his hand.

Two years separate Alex (25) and Sinner (23), who both injured their hips this season. While the Aussie has always given priority to the racket, for the Italian tennis player his love for tennis began around the age of 13. A sport that came out forcefully from those muscles of a child still struggling with the ball and a potential career as a skier. At 14 he left home to follow his dream: in his destiny there was Bordighera and the Piatti Tennis Center, where his talent began to take off. And today, like many of his colleagues, he lives in Monte Carlo. Both struggling with the ‘problems’ of globetrotters. The Italian struggled a bit with Italian in the early years. De Minaur instead at the beginning had to deal with coach Adolfo Gutierrez. So little English and a lot of Spanish, to the point that Alex is among the few to celebrate ‘naturally’ with a Vamos, without pause, without fashion. And today he also speaks French.

But above all, the two players who face each other today have in common the struggle with their inner demons. In the early years of his career, De Minaur was nicknamed ‘Demon’ for the restlessness with which he approached matches. Like many athletes, he resorts to a mental coach: they advise him to erase the anxiety by shuffling the cards. So Alex changes his appearance to confuse his inner demons and to look at himself in the mirror differently every day. So we have seen him over the years once with a shaved head, with a cap or even with a moustache.

And in recent times, after the Clostebol storm, Jannik has also had many demons to keep at bay. So much so that he has repeatedly declared that he has lost the joy of playing. The Italian – according to all his colleagues – has been a master at keeping at bay the jungle of feelings that devoured him, progressively hitting increasingly important goals up to number 1.

On the purely tennis side, Sinner (who trained with Ruud yesterday) is definitely the Australian’s ‘bête noire’. Demon has never beaten the 7-year-old from Sesto Pusteria in 23 previous matches, and that brings him quite good luck, given that he has won the title four times after defeating him. And the hope is that a fifth one could happen in a week’s time.

But there is another Italian running for glory. The Bolelli/Vavassori doubles. They will debut tomorrow at 18pm against Bopanna/Ebden in a rematch of the Melbourne final.