As we file, Jannik Sinner, the leading Italian tennis player and world No. 1, is playing point for point against the Spanish star Carlos Alcaraz. If the latter is heir to the immortal Rafael Nadal, the former carries the athletic legacy of Roger Federer.
[A]n alliance between tennis and the Roman Church will help recover … religious and cultural supremacy over the political realm.
It has been a glorious fortnight for tennis and for Italy in particular, whose resurgence as a tennis power was confirmed prior to the Sinner-Alcaraz match, with the women’s doubles win by the reigning champions at the Internationali, the great Rome Masters 1000, Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini.
Miss Paolini, who by all indications is as beloved in Italy as Sinner, won the women’s singles on Saturday, overcoming American darling and star Coco Gauff in two sets. No doubt the partisan crowd may have added to Miss G.’s nervous tension, she double faulted at least twelve times — we are reporting from afar with tech assistance and it is not the same as being there and some details get lost — which is really excessive even for someone known for having trouble with the serve. But as Coco herself said, Jasmine had the better game, aggressive and quick and smart and her marvelous smile sure said it all.
However, it is my belief that the really important thing here — and this is not to play down the Italian sweep that a Jannik Sinner win will represent — is that the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Leo XIV, received the young Italian at the Vatican on one of his off days and clearly they hit if off. A sinner is welcome at the Vatican, the multilingual American indicated, with a play on the Tyrolean’s name. As it happens, he was returning to the Tour in this tournament, having done a three month penance for a mishap involving a banned substance that unknown to him touched his epidermis during physical therapy.
The time off does not seem to have dampened his mastery, it may even have strengthened it as he exercised, skied, prepared his soul brain heart in his mountain village. He presented the people with a racquet like the one he uses as well as a membership card in the Italian Tennis Federation. For sure they will find time to hit a few for Robert Cardinal Prevost, as Leo XIV was known just a week ago, is a baseball and tennis fan and looks fit in body no less than soul.
Clearly the pope recognized the sincerity of Sinner’s penance, all the more so as he was by all accounts made to pay a price for another’s error; this comes in sharp contrast to the most famous penance in church history, Henry IV’s walk to Canossa where St Gregory VII reluctantly forgave him, perhaps knowing he soon would have to again excommunicate the power-lusting Holy Roman emperor.
One may think this was a quarrel of another time, another age. But the fact is that the competition between the temporal and the religious powers, or if you prefer politics vs. culture, in the sense of what gives society its spiritual cohesion, is not over, never will be as long as there is an aspiration — and a reality — of freedom.
The pope’s evident joy at meeting and befriending the young athlete, the latter’s obvious respect and even awe in the presence of the heir to St. Peter is a symptom of the resilience of Western civilization in a time of confusion bordering on nihilism, which of course has encouraged the West’s enemies to seek to destroy or enslave its nations and communities.
Sport plays a vital part in our free culture. It cannot be an accident that the United States Tennis Association chose to announce that it would be spending top dollars over the next several years to strengthen the sport by investing in facilities and player development during the Rome tournament.
This is long-term deep strategic planning to regain the glories of yore, but surely is also spurred by the Italians’ comparable investments in recent years, which manifestly have paid off handsomely, with Italian tennis at the most popular ever among pros and amateurs, and it has deep benches as well as many at the top of the rankings.
Details of the American development surge are not yet available from USTA, but a word of caution: money isn’t everything and neither is central planning; many if not most of the greatest immortals have not been, historically speaking, products of the establishment. (Bill Tilden, a maverick albeit scion of Philadelphia’s upper crust, won the first Rome tournament in 1930.) However, establishments, such as organized religion and national sports federations, function as useful backstops and standard-setters as well as foils to those who march to the beat of their own drum and choose to walk the road not taken by most.
In any event, an alliance between tennis and the Roman Church will help recover and sustain the principle of religious and cultural supremacy over the political realm. That the Church should take the lead on the cultural side is apt, as Catholicism is the leading religion by numbers in the U.S. and tennis is the fastest growing sport following padel and pickleball, which are derivatives invented for densely populated places where space is a premium.
There are unknown risks. Religion’s confrontation with political power, that by nature seeks to control all aspects of public and private life, is inevitable. A clash between the American pope and the American president may even have been foreordained. The question is whether the clash will produce constructive compromise or confrontation harmful to both. The former result is a key to saving Western civilization. The latter may warn of decay and doom.
As we saw, Leo XIV, is a tennis player, as Jannik Sinner was quick to recognize with admirable, understated and good natured courtesy. And Melania Trump, the First Lady, made it a personal project during her husband’s first term to renovate the legendary White House tennis court, on whose surface moved Theodore Roosevelt, G. H. W. Bush, and other greats. In the honored tradition of American politics your correspondent sought out his clout for a featherbed as director of White House Tennis but sad to report he never learned to play the D.C. grift game and struck out each time. But the point is elsewhere. It does not take one of those armchair experts who appear on t.v. (talk about grift …) to see what is needed: a Washington Invitational in which pope and president participate in an exhibition match.
Or at least sit courtside and discuss Rerum novarum, the 1891 encyclical of Leo XIII that some observers believe inspired Cardinal Prevost in his choice of names. Surely the prez could gain from listening to a discourse on that great document’s theme. Rule neither by vanity and greed nor accept the bleakness of despair by misery. These are mirror corruptions of the soul and heart, which the low-key, humble, profoundly thoughtful new pontiff might explain for our times. The president could note that it was another Leo who held off the Huns by means of skillful negotiation when they threatened the West as other barbarians threaten it today. Diplomacy is indispensable; a readiness to rely on power, however, is critical to diplomacy’s success.
On the Tennis Court
Sinner is a power from the baseline with an astonishing ability to generate pace; and he has a net game too, and speed and reach, and footwork learned on ski slopes. He retrieves almost anything sent to him and returns it with sharpshooter precision. He has the talent of building his point so he can “release the trigger” at the exact moment he will catch his opponent when he “ain’t where he’s oughta be”, causing him to remember the Louis Jordan line “is you or is you ain’t my baby?,” knowing very well that on the court, Jannik Sinner certainly ain’t, nor should he be.
(I am quoting here from the wise counsels of one of the top members of the Banneker Racquets, aka the Georgia Avenue Athletic and Social Organization, a key civic institution dedicated to “keepin’ ’em on the courts and out of court,” a formula borrowed from an older civic uplift organization, the Washington Tennis Foundation, now WETF, for education.)
In such insights can pope and president find common ground.
Sinner’s occupation of Rome has been as efficient as expected, though he had a “scare” in the semis, where New Jerseyan and American hope Tommy Paul got him off his game in the first set and stopped him from building any momentum, 6-1. But he figured Paul out and seized the offensive to take the next two smoothly. The tougher test had been the match against Francisco Cerundolo (Argentina), who kept their two sets close. Against the Spanish star Carlos Alcaraz in the forthcoming final, all bets are properly off but Leo XIV’s trust in faith — he is an Augustinian — could be a factor.
Faith and works, attention to one’s soul and training, as well as service to those less fortunate or gifted, or even unlucky enough to not be born American: such qualities apply in sports no less than in the leadership of churches and nations. By the time you read this you will have to look for a replay of the Sinner-Alcaraz final, which is okay, it is what I will have done, since I am not there. Enjoy and admire the great athletes wherever they come from and remember, America is great because it is good, and while trust is a virtue, make sure to verify all deals. With your finger on the trigger. I mean a good grip on your racquet.
Update: Well, Alcaraz won, 7-6(5), 6-1. over an exhausted Sinner whose foot reportedly was injured. Thus it goes, and both players played a great tournament and will soon clash again, as early as three weeks hence in the latter rounds of the French Open. Fede, Forza!
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