In the spirit of revolutionary criticism, I take issue with some of your categorizations. Berrettini is not the embodiment of Gramscian marxism, either in terms of his playing style, which is utterly imbalanced between overpowering and one-dimensional serve/forehand and underdeveloped backhand, nor in terms of his choice of clothing sponsor, the one time designer of Waffen SS uniforms. I see him as an infiltrator, a tennis version of Disneyland, seemingly innocuous nice-guy with good popularity among the proletariat, but without self awareness of his fundamentally North American principles.
Musetti, on the other hand, is an Italian Jacques Verges. Not a theorist per se, but a dandy who potentially augments longer term causes of the Left, albeit by seemingly taking on issues precious to the Right.
I see Sinner as the closest to Gramsci. Sinner's game style is the long march through the institutions of baseline rallies, looking opportunistically for moments of weakness or contradiction which can be exploited to create more space for political winners. Without any capital-intensive devastating weapons, he has to rely on the weapons of the partisans - numbers, percentages, and tactical intelligence.
One final aside - I take issue with the characterization of clay as fundamentally non-italian. As a matter of fact, one of the two "Spanish" players you mentioned, Guillermo Vilas, is Argentinian, which, as everyone in Latin America knows, is far closer to Italy than Spain. Even their accent sounds Italian. Furthermore, the dethroned King of Clay was Bjorn Borg, a relentless germanic player in style, appearance, and in temperament if ever there was one. Clay is the multifaceted surface that builds a durable and deep understanding of tennis, accommodating to all nations and all personalities. It's the nascent fifth international, with revolutionary possibility embedded in every granule.
In the spirit of revolutionary criticism, I take issue with some of your categorizations. Berrettini is not the embodiment of Gramscian marxism, either in terms of his playing style, which is utterly imbalanced between overpowering and one-dimensional serve/forehand and underdeveloped backhand, nor in terms of his choice of clothing sponsor, the one time designer of Waffen SS uniforms. I see him as an infiltrator, a tennis version of Disneyland, seemingly innocuous nice-guy with good popularity among the proletariat, but without self awareness of his fundamentally North American principles.
Musetti, on the other hand, is an Italian Jacques Verges. Not a theorist per se, but a dandy who potentially augments longer term causes of the Left, albeit by seemingly taking on issues precious to the Right.
I see Sinner as the closest to Gramsci. Sinner's game style is the long march through the institutions of baseline rallies, looking opportunistically for moments of weakness or contradiction which can be exploited to create more space for political winners. Without any capital-intensive devastating weapons, he has to rely on the weapons of the partisans - numbers, percentages, and tactical intelligence.
One final aside - I take issue with the characterization of clay as fundamentally non-italian. As a matter of fact, one of the two "Spanish" players you mentioned, Guillermo Vilas, is Argentinian, which, as everyone in Latin America knows, is far closer to Italy than Spain. Even their accent sounds Italian. Furthermore, the dethroned King of Clay was Bjorn Borg, a relentless germanic player in style, appearance, and in temperament if ever there was one. Clay is the multifaceted surface that builds a durable and deep understanding of tennis, accommodating to all nations and all personalities. It's the nascent fifth international, with revolutionary possibility embedded in every granule.