At 28, many tennis players are already contemplating retirement. But in a season in which she triumphed at the Olympics and made two appearances in Grand Slam finals, Italy’s petite powerhouse is just getting warmed up.

_{By Justin Birnbaum, Forbes Staff}

On the famed red clay of Roland-Garros in August, Jasmine Paolini could hardly contain her excitement as she tossed her racket high in the air, pumped both of her fists and embraced her doubles partner, Sara Errani. Just seconds earlier, the Italian duo had made history, defeating Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider to claim their nation’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in tennis. “We were playing good, so I was repeating to myself, ‘Maybe we can have a chance,’” Paolini tells Forbes, a few weeks removed from the Paris Games. “But I was hoping for this gold medal.”

Admittedly, even Paolini couldn’t have predicted this breakthrough moment, let alone the banner year that has undoubtedly transformed her life. In February, she picked up her first WTA 1000 title at the Dubai Tennis Championships, and she followed it up with a six-month stretch that included runs to the finals of the French Open (in both singles and doubles) and Wimbledon, in addition to her Olympic triumph. Paolini enters next week’s U.S. Open as the fifth-ranked player in the world, an astonishing achievement considering that three years ago, she had barely cracked the top 100.

Late bloomers, like the American Jessica Pegula, are fairly rare in professional tennis, a sport in which many players often contemplate retirement upon reaching their 30s. But at 28, the once-plucky underdog Paolini is opening a whole new world of possibilities, especially off the court. Her improbable rise has already yielded several new brand partnerships in 2024, expanding a portfolio that includes longtime sponsors Asics and Yonex.

“If you win matches, of course, you have more visibility,” she says. “So that’s normal that sponsors are coming. I was a little bit surprised, but I’m, of course, happy and proud of it.”

Still, Paolini has a long way to go if she hopes to catch her peers among tennis’ highest-paid players. Coco Gauff, the top woman on this year’s list and No. 3 overall, earned an estimated $27.1 million over the past 12 months before taxes and agent’s fees, with $7.1 million coming on the court and $20 million off it. By comparison, Paolini has won only about $7 million in prize money for her entire career, with $4.3 million coming this calendar year. (That excludes the $196,000 Italy awards for gold medals at the Olympics.) And even with her new brand deals, Forbes estimates her off-court earnings are just now approaching $1 million annually.

Those figures could grow quickly, though, if marketers embrace the infectious smile, wry sense of humor and vicious competitiveness that have made Paolini tennis’ latest fan favorite. “It’s never easy,” says Guillermo Aylon, Paolini’s manager at Sweden-based agency WeSport. “But of course, it’s something very positive. Brands want to be associated with Jasmine because of what it transmits to the audience and to the people out there.”

And Paolini doesn’t have to look far to find a similar success story. Tunisian star Ons Jabeur soared up the rankings after a two-year stretch that included four WTA Tour wins and three Grand Slam final appearances. Nicknamed “The Minister of Happiness” in her home country because of her joyful disposition, Jabeur used her surging popularity to broaden her business interests, joining Evolve, the sports agency cofounded by Naomi Osaka, and purchasing a small stake in the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage.

Given her meteoric year, Paolini has an opportunity to follow a similar trajectory, and she has the benefit of coming from a “very good” market, Aylon adds. Tennis interest has steadily risen in Italy, with the number of registered club players climbing to 820,000 last year, from 129,000 in 2001, according to Reuters. At the same time, Italy has experienced a renaissance at the pro level, thanks in part to increased support to young talent over the past two decades. In addition to Paolini ranking No. 5 on the women’s side, Italy has five top-40 players in the men’s game, led by world No. 1 Janik Sinner, and the country collected two medals in tennis at the Paris Olympics.

That momentum is already paying dividends. Paolini has added Italian brands Italgas, a Milan-based gas company, and Intesa Sanpaolo, one of the country’s largest banks, to her portfolio, both of which have other involvement in tennis. Intesa, for example, is a host partner of the ATP Finals while Italgas sponsors the country’s youth championships.

Paolini isn’t ruling out global opportunities, either, which Aylon sees as a big part of her long-term future. She signed with the Florida-based Hotelplanner in January and did a one-off deal with English medical technology firm Smith & Nephew during Wimbledon. “I don’t want to limit myself to Italy, and why not?” says Paolini, who also has Polish and Ghanaian roots.

All this success is still somewhat a surprise to Paolini, who made her WTA Tour debut as a 21-year-old in 2017 and didn’t break into the top 50 until roughly four years later. When she first joined WeSport in January, Aylon described it as “quite challenging to get her deals, even though she was in the top 30 at the time.” Winning at Dubai earlier this year was unexpected, and the run that followed changed everything.

And while Paolini still can’t point to one exact reason her game has leveled up to this magnitude, she cites increased maturity on the court, an improved serve (which is a challenge for a player who is relatively short at 5 feet 4 inches) and playing more doubles as contributing factors to her steep rise.

Nor is she the only one benefiting from her surging popularity. “Amongst the core fans, we’ve gained a lot of visibility and credibility in recent years,” says Casey Yoneyama, head of global marketing at Yonex, which initially signed Paolini on the junior circuit and renewed her contract in the past year. “So having somebody like Jasmine come up so quickly, it gives us more credibility in that space, which is great.”

The newfound fame has hardly sunk in for Paolini, who was born in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, a town in Tuscany with a population of less than 6,000. At the French Open this year, she frequented the same local Parisian restaurant repeatedly even as she tore through the bracket. It wasn’t anything fancy. “She likes to keep things simple,” Aylon says. “So I don’t think that’s going to change whether she’s top five or she’s No. 1.”

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