Jannik Sinner as popular as Taylor Swift, at least in Italy: Andy Roddick revealed in his podcast Served with that the young Italian has achieved incredible fame in his country. The former American legend said that soccer - the most popular sport in Italy, had 1.3 million viewers on the same day that Jannik played at the ATP Finals, and in which it had 3 million viewers and doubled the soccer rating.
"In Italy he is basically like Taylor Swift in the United States. I went on vacation this summer and everyone was talking about Sinner, everyone was asking me about him. There is great enthusiasm for this emergence of the young Italian," explained Roddick.
"Sinner seemed like a joke, in the most positive way of the term. He won all the sets, conceding a maximum of 3/4 games to his opponents, these are results that you see a Junior do at 16 when he plays at home and is older and superior to his rivals. What Sinner has done on hard courts this year is absurd. He lost the fewest games to win the tournament, beating Roger Federer's record," added the American in his podcast.
The ATP No.1 won his first ATP Finals title last Sunday, which crowned an exceptional season. The Italian beat Alex De Minaur, Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud and the American again, in the final, all without losing a single set.
The 23-year-old's season has been absolutely dreamy: 8 titles, including the Australian Open, the US Open and the ATP Masters 1000 in Miami, Cincinnati, Shanghai. His numbers and stats are projecting him (and us who love tennis) into the new post Big 3 era.
We recall that, alongside his successes on the courts, Jannik has had a complicated season due to testing positive for the doping drug Clostebol, found during the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. The Italian will now have to wait for the final ruling from the CAS, after the appeal made by WADA last September, with a request for a 1-2 year disqualification.
