The dream is for an Italian to return to Rome to win 50 years after Adriano Panatta. The goal is to bring great tennis back to Cagliari as early as this year .
Angelo Binaghi spoke on the sidelines of the presentation of the America's Cup preliminary regattas scheduled for Cagliari in May and announced that the Challenger could return to the Sardinian capital in 2026: " If everything goes as we hope with the renovations at the Tennis Club, the Challenger will be held in Cagliari the week before Rome . We hope to be able to announce the news in the coming weeks and finally resume this story of the Cagliari Challenger, which began a few years ago and which, in our minds , should become a regular annual fixture in Italian and world tennis ."
Born in 2020 at Forte Village as ATP 250, the Sardegna Open stopped in 2022 with the restoration of the normal post-Covid tennis calendar and returned in 2023, as Challenger 175 on the Monte Urpinu courts . Now, after a year-long hiatus, the goal is to make it a regular fixture once the renovations to the tennis club are completed.
Cagliari aside, the new tennis season gets into full swing on Sunday with the start of the Australian Open, which promises to be a great one for Italy: "They say there's no two without three, it happened in the Davis Cup, now let's hope Jannik wins back the Australian Open," is the hope of the president of the Fitp.
What kind of year will it be for the Italian team? 2026 will see us, at least in terms of the rankings, both individual and team, starting stronger than ever. Because it's not just Sinner, there's Musetti, number 5 in the world , which basically nobody talks about because nowadays when you have the number one, even being number 5 seems like little; but if they had told us ten years ago, we would have been speechless. There are . There are always many unknowns, because tennis is a universal sport with extremely high competition and you always have many opponents who want to kill you, but we and so despite all the unknowns that exist at the start of such an intense and long season as that of world tennis, we are strong and we start this year stronger than ever. We are confident that it will be another year of great success for Italian tennis."
