Rome - 05/18

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Today is Monday, May 18, in Rome it's 08:30 and there are 13 degrees. Ok, let's go.

Today for breakfast

• 🇮🇹 Sinner beats Ruud 6-4 6-4 and completes the Career Golden Masters
• 🇮🇹 Bolelli and Vavassori, first Italians to win the doubles in the Open Era
• 🇫🇷 Roland Garros qualifying week begins
• 🎾 Geneva, Hamburg, Strasbourg and Rabat open the road to Paris

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

🇮🇹 Sinner closes the circle in Rome

Jannik Sinner beat Casper Ruud 6-4 6-4 in one hour and forty-four minutes on the Centrale at the Foro Italico, becoming the first Italian to win the Italian Open since Adriano Panatta in 1976 and, at the same time, only the second player in history after Djokovic to complete the Career Golden Masters.
In the first set Sinner struggled to get into the match: Ruud went up an early break at 2-0, Sinner immediately recovered for 2-2, the players held serve up to 4-4 and then at 5-4 came the decisive break to close it out 6-4. Once he found his rhythm, he never let it go.
More than the technical detail, what remains is the feeling of a title arrived inside a huge context, with fifty years of Italian waiting to absorb and a set of nine Masters 1000 titles to close out right at home. "There was a lot of tension on both sides, it wasn't perfect tennis, but I'm really happy," he said on the microphone at the end of the match, and perhaps that's the sentence that best captures the way this final was won.

🇮🇹 Bolelli and Vavassori, the first in the Open Era

Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori beat Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 7-6(8) 6-7(3) 10-3, becoming the first Italian pair to win the doubles at the Italian Open in the Open Era. Saving four set points at 3-5 down in the first set, the Azzurri flipped the momentum with a tie-break played on a knife's edge, gave up the second set while still staying in the match, and in the match tie-break closed with a clear gap that tells more than the flow of the contest. It's the second Masters 1000 of their season after Miami and it comes at the tournament that, for geographical reasons before historical ones, weighed more than all the others. Hard to separate the sporting value from the emotional one, on a day in which Rome delivered two Italian titles within a few hours.

🇮🇹 A Sunday that shifts the coordinates

The striking fact, beyond the individual results, is the coincidence: on the same afternoon on the Centrale, a fifty-year-old taboo fell in singles and an even longer one in doubles. It's an overlap that will hardly find space in the coming years and that, given how it was built, describes a phase in which Italian tennis struggles to be perceived as an isolated phenomenon. Ruud, for his part, leaves Rome with his first final here and with the confirmation of being one of the very few active players to have reached the final at all three clay Masters 1000s, a stat that will be worth keeping in mind in Paris. From today everything changes: ten days of break, Roland Garros qualifying, and a clay season that enters the phase in which Rome's numbers start to settle in.

WHAT HAPPENS TODAY:

• 🇫🇷 Roland Garros, first round of qualifying - Play starts at 10:00 on the courts of the Bois de Boulogne, men and women at the same time. It's the week separating Rome from the main draw, set to begin on Sunday May 25, and for many Italians outside the top 100 it's one of the appointments that defines the season.
• 🇨🇭 Geneva, ATP 250: draw begins - A full-week schedule before Paris. For those looking for real minutes on clay without having to go through Roland Garros qualifying, it's an opportunity that weighs more than the category suggests.
• 🇩🇪 Hamburg, ATP 500 - Hamburg week begins, the last 500 on clay before the Slam and traditionally a ground for those looking for rhythm and confidence. An interesting draw for reading the form of those who in Paris will play in the main draw without having played Rome.
• 🇫🇷 Strasbourg, WTA 500 - The last women's 500 before Roland Garros, with Mboko leading the seeds together with Jovic, Keys and Fernandez, and Raducanu among the most awaited entries but not seeded. The form of these first two weeks on clay will come out of the results here more than from the previous brackets.
• 🇲🇦 Rabat, WTA 250 - The 24th edition of the Moroccan tournament, running in parallel with Strasbourg. A week of rotation and ranking points, but also one of the last chances to play real matches before Paris.

To dig deeper

• Jannik Sinner rules in Rome, continues historic Masters 1000 run with sixth successive title
• Italian Open 2026: Jannik Sinner completes career Golden Masters, makes Italian tennis history on home soil
• Jannik Sinner on historic Rome triumph: 'There's no better place to complete this set'
• Simone Bolelli & Andrea Vavassori win Rome, become first Italian champions in Open Era
• Svitolina wins third Rome title, becomes first Ukrainian with 20 WTA crowns
• Opening Week: All the details - Roland-Garros 2026

Enjoy your breakfast and have a great day.

See you tomorrow at 08:30 with TIE-Breakfast