Nicola Pietrangeli, two-time Roland Garros champion and the first Italian to win a Grand Slam tournament, has died at the age of 92, the FITP (the Italian Tennis Federation) announced this Monday (1st).
“Italian tennis is mourning an icon. The only Italian to join the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Nicola Pietrangeli, has passed away at the age of 92,” FITP wrote on its X account.
Born in Tunisia in 1933, the son of an Italian father and a Russian mother, Pietrangeli was considered, until the emergence of Jannik Sinner, the greatest Italian tennis player in history.
In his career, which developed mainly before the Open Era, Pietrangeli won 48 singles titles, including two Roland Garros titles (1959 and 1960), according to the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport.
On Parisian clay, he lost two other finals, to the Spaniard Manuel Santana, in 1961 and 1964.
On his favorite surface, he also won three Italian Open titles in Monte Carlo (1961, 1967 and 1968) and two in Rome (1957 and 1961).
Pietrangeli also reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon in 1960, losing to Australian Rod Laver.
His career was also marked by the Davis Cup, a competition in which he played a record 164 matches, between singles and doubles, with 120 victories.
However, he never managed to win the tournament, losing the finals in 1960 and 1961, both to Australia.
On the other hand, Nicola Pietrangeli was captain of the Italian team that won its first Davis Cup title in 1976.
One of the main courts at Foro Itálico, host of the Masters 1000 tournament in Rome, is named after him.
