Forza, forza, forza: In tennis’ “big” era, Jasmine Paolini proves that a little can mean a lot

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Modern tennis is all about the “big.”

Big three. Big four; new big four. Big serve. Big game. Bigger-than-ever players hitting bigger-than-ever balls.

Modern tennis, Jasmine Paolini would like a word with you. At this most improbable moment, Paolini — all 5ft 3in (160cm) of her — is the biggest thing in women’s tennis.

For the second time in five weeks, Paolini, the diminutive Italian, has forced everyone in the sport to forget everything they thought they knew about the modern version of tennis. She has reminded them of one of the things, maybe even the thing, that makes tennis special.

Its champions can come in all shapes and sizes. 

“Amazing,” Paolini said in the glow of Thursday evening after beating Croatia’s Donna Vekic 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 to reach the Wimbledon final, five weeks after doing the same thing at Roland Garros in Paris.

A little more than a year ago, Paolini was already into the back half of her 20s and floating between 50 and 80 in the rankings, where she has spent much of her career. Even the most dedicated of tennis fans knew the Italian as a good, tenacious tour player — but never a likely Grand Slam winner.

Even when she won the WTA Masters 1000 in Dubai, one of the more important tournaments of the year, the general thought was that women’s tennis has a tendency to produce some random champions throughout the calendar, players who run hot for a week on a favorable draw and end up hoisting a trophy when all is said and done.

Now, Paolini, a 28-year-old from Tuscany with one of the great heads of curly hair, which she ties into its greatest when she plays, is up to No 7 in the world and No 3 in the race to the end-of-year WTA Finals in Riyadh. She’ll be top five in the rankings after Wimbledon ends.

She is another late-blooming Italian, along the lines of Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta. She and her compatriot, Lorenzo Musetti, have turned this Wimbledon fortnight into a shotmaker’s delight — a celebration of variety and precision over speed and power — during a tennis moment when bashing is all the rage.

Italians came for Jannik Sinner, the world No 1 and one of the favorites for the men’s title. Physically hampered, he lost in the quarterfinals to Daniil Medvedev.

The Italians have stayed for Paolini and Musetti.

Musetti, 22, said this is how he always played growing up. Then he joined the ATP Tour three years ago and started trying to hang with the testosterone-fueled champions of the day.

Now, especially on the Wimbledon grass, which rewards players who can change the pace, add slice and spin, and move with finesse, he has returned back to what brought him to prominence as a junior. In his quarterfinal match against Taylor Fritz on Wednesday, he cut Fritz’s big serve and thumping forehand to ribbons with a beguiling mix of looping, twisting balls that had Fritz stumbling over his feet and guessing, often wrongly, about what would be coming at him next.

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“At a certain point of the match, I felt from the baseline I could, let’s say, win every point,” Musetti said. “He was not in a good position with all my variation.”

On Thursday, it was Vekic’s turn to suffer and lose a battle between power and panache, this time at the hands of Paolini, however unlikely that might have seemed a few months ago.

Coming into the 2024 grass swing, Paolini had been on tour for nearly a decade without going past the first round at Wimbledon. She had never won a tour-level match on grass until last month at Eastbourne.

A creature of clay, like so many Italians, she assumed this green, soft stuff would never be her surface. 

Her longtime coach, Renzo Furlan, insisted otherwise. He said she could be successful on the grass, especially since her movement has improved so much in the past year thanks to working with a specialist fitness coach. 

Furlan, who is from Veneto, is far from one of the celebrity super-coaches that can become nearly as famous as the players they guide. For years, Italian players have recognized him as an expert strategist who learned the sport from Ricardo Piatti, one of those super-coaches. Furlan reached No 19 in the world rankings during his playing days in the 1990s. 

Always fast, Paolini has dedicated herself as never before to running, strength work, and injury prevention, and most important for the grass, to her movement. 

“Every day we try to do a little bit,” said Paolini, whose emotional, heart-on-her-sleeve on-court demeanor has made her an overnight cult figure with the British crowds. 

The fist-pumps, the relentless stream of “forza, forza, forza” point after point and the celebratory yells when she pulls off the impossible have made her easy to love for fans and impossible to overcome for players.

Paolini’s scrambling and guile make her a tricky opponent to put away (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Thursday’s win over Vekic had all the familiar traits of Paolini’s triumphs of late, starting with her walk onto the court with an opponent who was somewhere between six and 12 inches taller than she is. 

The Paolini routines flowed from there, all built around a determined and tactical dismantling of a player who gets far better grades in the eye test of what makes a star athlete. Paolini proves that test more meaningless every day. 

She put this best last month in Paris when she was asked whether her stature was a counter-intuitive super power.  

“I wish I was taller, but it’s OK, I’m not,” she said. “We have to do with what I have.”

She did that and more on Thursday, beginning with a steadfast refusal to quit in a match where she was essentially behind until the final games. She was down a set and won the second. Twice she was down a service break in the third, then figured out a way to break back. 

The point that may likely keep Vekic awake at night came late in the second set, with Paolini serving at 15-15. Vekic drew Paolini in, then lobbed deep to the postage stamp back-right corner of the court. Paolini scrambled back after it.

Somehow she got her strings on it and lofted another lob high to the front of the court. Good things can happen when you make the opponent hit one more shot, no matter how slim the chance. If you don’t, the chances are zero.

Vekic let it bounce, then butchered the smash wide. 

In an instant, the Croatian had gone from a golden opportunity to play free and serve out the match, to fretting that she’d blown her best chance of the day.

Paolini’s embrace of her talents extends to her serve. At her size, it’s physically impossible to rely on a flat bomb of a first serve, so she moves it around the service box, constantly keeping her opponents guessing whether she will go down the center, out wide, or into the body. It’s not even clear what her go-to serve is when she is under pressure, putting doubts into her rivals’ minds when the doubts are supposed to be inside hers.

Paolini embraces direction on her serve (Clive Mason/Getty Images)

Through her first five matches, Paolini had served wide 110 times, into the opponent’s body 93 times, and down the center 121 times. On Thursday, another day of varied targets, her first serve averaged 97.3mph, compared with 110 for Vekic. Spots over speed.

She has read the book on how to beat shorter players over and over. She has written her own book on how to combat that. 

Draw her in with a drop shot and lob over her head?

After using her wheels and her engine to catch up to the ball, she’s hanging a step or two closer to the service line so she can cover the lob. Or she’s hit the ball deep, and with some pace, and is now so close to the net that she’s cut off the angle and can stab her volley into the front of the court.

The Italian is clinical and comfortable at the net (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

How about a kick serve that bounces up to her forehead?

Nope. She has eschewed the in-vogue WTA tactic of standing in front of the baseline on second serves and has instead perfected the deep looping return from six feet behind it. 

Well, then surely she can’t match most of her opponents’ power.

Wrong again.

Paolini understands her kinetic chain as well as anyone. She knows that power on a tennis shot starts with a push off the back ankle, rises up through the leg and takes off with hip rotation. Watch her jump into a forehand and uncork her shoulders into her backhand and marvel at the flow — but not for too long because the ball is going to be through the court before you know it.

And don’t even think about tiring her out. In the third set, after Paolini had run her ragged for more than two hours, Vekic was struggling to catch her breath after each point.

“I thought I was going to die,” Vekic said. I had so much pain in my arm, in my leg.” 

Paolini, playing from behind until she wasn’t, was bouncing on her toes as she waited for Vekic’s serve, ready to play until the curfew if that was what it was going to take.

“The last month has been crazy for me,” Paolini said on the court when it was over. She fell in love with tennis as a five-year-old. All these years later, she has come up with answers for her shortcomings and weaknesses to the full extent of her powers.  

As a child, she used to watch Wimbledon on television, seeing Roger Federer float across Centre Court every year. Now she’s the one doing that. 

“I always try to remember where I am,” she said earlier in the week. “I must never forget that these are things I dreamed about and even if they seem normal now, they’re really not.”

Crazy as it may seem, they get a little more normal every day.

(Top photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)