Milan, Dec. 1 (LaPresse) – Italian tennis mourns its icon. Nicola Pietrangeli, the only Italian tennis player inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, has died at the age of 92. He still holds the all-time world records in Davis Cup for matches played (164), singles matches won (78-32), and doubles matches won (42-12). Together with Orlando Sirola, he formed the most successful pair in the competition’s history (34 wins in 42 matches), although he won the Cup only as captain in 1976. His greatest achievement, he always said, was taking Italy to Chile and winning the diplomatic and political battle against those pushing for a boycott as a protest against General Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
A champion of the Dolce Vita era, made famous by Federico Fellini, Pietrangeli was considered among the world’s top ten players from 1957 to 1964, when rankings were determined by journalists. He won the French Open twice, in 1959 and 1960, and was ranked world number three in those years. He also won the Italian Open twice and a total of 48 titles, in addition to the gold medal at the IV Mediterranean Games in Naples in 1963 (defeating Spaniard Manuel Santana) and a bronze medal in doubles with Sirola. He also earned a bronze medal in men’s singles at the exhibition tennis tournament at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. “If I had trained more,” he said, “I would have won more but I would have enjoyed it less.”