Jannik Sinner, the butterfly hunter

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There was something undefined in Jannik Sinner 's gaze after the match lost to Carlos Alcaraz , a void towards the horizon. Never has he been seen like this after a defeat, prostrate, sitting with a hole in his heart. It's sport, one might say very banally, it gives and takes away, sometimes with indulgence, at others without mercy. In Sinner-Alcaraz we witnessed a comparison of styles, but above all a match between two completely different men. Alcaraz is almost obtuse in his being stubbornly attached to victory, gifted with that unbearable insistence to live if you find yourself on the other side of the net . Anyone would have resigned themselves in the face of a disadvantage, not him, he continued, like a climber without a rope, to climb the wall, underlining each step towards the summit with his battle cry, that "vamos", with a b instead of a v, and a raised fist. Sometimes he would put his hand over his ear to listen to the crowd cheering for him (damn French, we'll remember), and I thought that if he had done that to me, a hysterical player of nothing, I would have covered him in balls.

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As you understand, my anger is that of the fan who has had the end of a beautiful dream stolen, awakened by the barking of a dog . I could apologize, but I can't, not even a week after the final in Paris. Reliving the moments of the match, there was a moment in which time stood still, on the three match points. The direction lingered on the shining eyes of Mrs. Siglinde, ready to jump to her feet for joy, then, in a fade, the images slipped onto the cup. It was beautiful and obviously still, but in my imagination that cup was rising, rising, carried high in the hands of a smiling Jannik like we had never seen him before . It would have been the definitive scene of the return, the sanction for the facts that had unjustly nailed him to apartheid for three months.

Alongside those snapshots of celebration, however, a premonition emerged, something literary, the next page of a novel in which events quickly precipitate, in a whirlwind fall into the void. Sinner, increasingly white and tired, found the strength to rebel against a destiny that had already been written. And on the page of the novel entitled “The Butterfly Hunter” I read: I am Jannik, a simple boy from the mountains. I dreamed of becoming a butterfly hunter, chasing them across the meadows to the highest peaks. Behind the most beautiful butterfly, at a certain point I got lost, overwhelmed by the smoke of the clouds. I was afraid, afraid of the balance, of vertigo and I fell . Almost nothing was missing to conquer the summit, and the butterfly slipped out of my hands. I felt alone, and I began to tremble. I apologize to everyone if, for once, I was simply a man.

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