Farewell to Gianni Clerici, pen and voice of tennis

“A writer on loan to sports”. This is how Italo Calvino had defined Gianni Clerici, who died today in Bellaggio, on Lake Como, at the age of 91. The journalist, writer and commentator, for the most part, will always remain “that of tennis”, the envoy to the great international tournaments, the protagonist of irresistible commentaries paired with his friend Rino Tommasi, the author of monumental monographs such as ” Wimbledon “, dedicated to what one of its teachers, the writer Giorgio Bassani, called” the Vatican of tennis “. His health had deteriorated after a stroke in 2020. Sports journalism master, internationally known for his knowledge of tennis, Clerici – who had been a tennis player in his youth – for the number and quality of his publications (over 6 thousand articles alone) was included in 2006 in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the second Italian present after Nicola Pietrangeli (awarded the award in 1986). He is also the author of novels, poems, short stories and theatrical texts.Born as Giovanni Clerici in Como on July 24, 1930, he established himself as a sports journalist specializing in tennis, a sport he practiced with good results by winning two Italian junior doubles titles in paired with Fausto Gardini (1947 and 1948) and always as a junior he reached the singles final in 1950. Also in 1950 he won the “Coppa de Galea” in Vichy, repeating the success in 1952 at the “Monte Carlo New Eve Tournament”. As a singles player he participated in the tournaments of Wimbledon (1953) and Roland Garros (1954), always stopping in the first round. After having collaborated from 1951 to 1954 with “La Gazzetta dello Sport” and in 1954 with “Sport Giallo” and “Il Mondo “, Clerici in 1956 became correspondent and then columnist of” Il Giorno “, with whom he had a collaborative relationship until 1988. From 1988 he collaborated with” L’Espresso “and” La Repubblica “. Clerici is the author of classic texts on sports, including “Il vero tennis” (Longanesi, 1965); “The easy tennis” (Mondadori, 1972), “500 years of tennis” (Mondadori 1974, with reprints updated in 1987, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2013), translated in France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Spain ; the biography “Divina. Suzanne Wengen, the greatest tennis player of the twentieth century” (Corbaccio, 2002), published for the first time in France in 1984, dedicated to the six-time winner of Wimbledon; “Gianni Clerici at the Internazionali d’Italia. Chronicles of the scribe 1930-2010” (Rizzoli, 2010); “Wimbledon. Sixty years of history of the most important tournament in the world” (Mondadori, 2013); the autobiography “That of tennis. History of my life and of men better known than me” (Mondadori, 2015); “Tennis in art. Tales of paintings and sculptures from antiquity to today” (Mondadori, 2018). Clerici was one of the most important Italian technical commentators, alongside Rino Tommasi: first on Telecapodistria, then Tele + and finally Sky Sport. “Time” magazine had crowned him as the “Italian master of style”. He coined the phrase “hard turf” (to emphasize the slowing down of the Wimbledon turf); the term “semiriga” (to indicate the impossibility of establishing with certainty whether the ball was inside or outside); “double mistake” (preferring it to “double fault”). Clerici was also the author of narrative texts (the trilogy “I gesti bianchi” – “Alassio 1939 – Costa Azzurra 1950 – London 1960”, Baldini & Castoldi, 1995; the collection of short stories “A night with the Mona Lisa”, Rizzoli, 2008; the novels “Australia felix”, Fandango, 2012, and “2084. The dictatorship of women”, Baldini + Castolfi, 2020), of poetic collections (“Postumo in vita “, Sartorio, 2005;” The sound of color “, Fandango, 2011) and historical essays (” Mussolini. The last night “, Rizzoli, 2007). (by Paolo Martini)