After the finest season of his career, Jannik Sinner has surged to an almost divine status enjoyed by only a handful of transcendent Italian sporting champions:
Skier Alberto Tomba, motorcyclist Valentino Rossi and footballer Roberto Baggio.
Sinner is aged just 23. But as the only player from the nation to ever be ranked as the world’s best tennis player, he has already joined the pantheon.
The frenzied focus on the boy from San Candido as he arrived at the ATP Finals in Turin – camera-flashing photographers and screaming autograph-hunters being kept at arm’s length by burly security men – demonstrated he is a man in demand.
And the well-documented doping case that is still ongoing does not seem to have lessened that demand if the newspaper columns and crowd support at his matches here are anything to go by.
“This is a fully new dimension,” veteran Italian tennis journalist Ubaldo Scanagatta told BBC Sport.
“I have been attending Grand Slam tournaments since 1974, and I have only witnessed something similar for a tennis player once – in 1976 when Adriano Panatta won the French Open after beating Bjorn Borg in the quarter-finals.”
It has been ‘Sinnermania’ in Turin.
All of the 183,000 tickets put on sale for the the ATP Finals – 30,000 more than in 2023 – were sold days before the start of the event.
On the secondary market, entry for the group-stage matches touched 600 euros (£500). For the final – where everyone hopes to see their ginger-haired hero, nicknamed the ‘Orange Fox’ – they are going for 1,500 euros (£1,250).
His arrival at a medical centre, where he underwent some fitness tests before the tournament, reminded many of what happened six years ago at Juventus’ sports clinic when Cristiano Ronaldo signed: mass hysteria and unlimited enthusiasm.
His tennis quality and off-court personality – calmness and an understated humour – have made him a national darling and attracted blue-chip Italian brands to fight for his endorsement.
“Jannik represents a new way of being a tennis number one, one very close to people,” said Diego Nargiso, a former world number 67 and now the master of ceremonies at the ATP Finals, the season-ending tournament for the top eight men’s singles players and doubles teams.
“He’s so simple and down to earth. That’s why the people – and the sponsors – love him.”
One of his main characteristics is mental strength.
This not only allows him to raise his game when it counts most, but also helped him out of the toughest period of his career.