Rome, 3 Dec. (LaPresse) – “Nicola was the Davis Cup; he is the player in the world who contributed the most to the tournament. He reached two world finals as a player, both lost in Australia, then won it once as captain and three times as an official. This winning system was built to try to have, in the long term, good players who were also good people off the court and had values to pass on to new generations. A bit like what Lea Pericoli and Nicola have done in their lives,” said Angelo Binaghi, president of the Italian Tennis Federation (FITP), speaking to journalists at the Italian Forum on the occasion of Pietrangeli’s funeral viewing.
“Any memories? We spent more time together when we were losing, in the early years when we lost a lot, when nobody paid attention to us. It would be me, him, and Lea in a restaurant in front of bottles of wine, and those were life lessons, a setting hard to forget,” he added.