All together, laughter and music selected by Vanessa Bellini, Matteo Berrettini’s partner. Two birthdays are the opportunity to meet up in an evening that Cobolli would like to turn into a ritual: “Unplugging together is the best thing. We are a good team not only on the pitch, but also off it”
A dinner with friends, between kids who have always shared the same life, hopes and efforts, since they were children. And so the birthdays of Andrea Vavassori, who turned 31, and Flavio Cobolli, 24, yesterday was the opportunity for the Italian troop to meet again on the eve of the tournament. It seemed like a family reunion, with the Berrettini brothers, Andrea Pellegrino, Lorenzo Sonego, Andrea Vavassori, Flavio Cobolli and Lorenzo Musetti, all or almost all accompanying their respective companions. There was a lot of Davis Cup, with the protagonists of the latest victory, Jannik Sinner was not there, busy with sponsors and with pre-tournament rest, but the heart of Italian tennis was all in one room. Flavio Cobolli said it: “That’s our way of unplugging a bit, and doing it together I think is the most beautiful thing. Even sending the signal that we are united is something that can help the movement grow and make people understand that we are a good team not only on the pitch but also off it.”
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Not just tennis, also chat and a bit of music, selected by Vanessa Bellini, Matteo Berrettini’s partner, courtesy of Lorenzo Musetti, who is usually responsible for the Italian playlists: “This time I allowed Vanessa to select the music, but just this once…” joked the Italian number two who is defending the semi-final here. Cobolli proposes to make this appointment a pleasant habit: “We had fun, we ate and we also joked, we talked about how many times we would have had the pleasure of spending the evenings together but we couldn’t do it – he concluded -. It was nice: I hope it can be repeated. A routine like dinner before the tournament is something that makes you feel good and that I would like to always be able to do, especially with the people I love”.
