Jasmine Paolini, the smile and energy of a multi-ethnic champion

The unruly curls always tied on court, the smile that has won everyone over, the grit of character that is all inside her tennis. Jasmine Paolini has exploded in this 2024 with results that leave one bewildered. Only four years ago she was ranked 95th, last year she was 30th, from Monday 15 July she will be world no. 5. The last player to win - as she does now - two Slam finals in Paris and London within a month of each other was Serena Williams in 2016. Her 'normality', her spontaneity, her being so un-vip and at the same time so tenacious on court drive the public crazy.

Born in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (Lucca) on 4 January 1996, she grew up in Bagni di Lucca in a multi-ethnic family: her father Ugo is Tuscan and worked in the family bar where she met her mother, Jacqueline Gardiner, who is Polish (in fact, Jasmine also speaks Polish) like her maternal grandmother, while her maternal grandfather is Ghanaian. Jasmine - who has a younger brother, William, and also plays) - took up the racket at the age of five, encouraged above all by her uncle Adriano, and started at the Tc Mirafiume in Bagni di Lucca, eventually preferring tennis to swimming. He learns with masters Marco Picchi and Ivano Pieri, then moves to the Vicopelago centre, then, at 15, the quantum leap to Tirrenia, near Pisa: it is there that he meets Tatiana Garbin and Renzo Furlan, former world number 19, who was in charge of the federal technical centre, who became his part-time coach in 2015 and then full-time after the pandemic.

Her idol has always been Roger Federer, her dream to win a Slam. And so, after four years at Tirrenia, Jasmine became 'big' and began her journey as a professional. Her first important victory on the Itf circuit came in Marseille in 2017, she won against Tatiana Maria in the $100,000 tournament and climbed to 132nd place in the rankings. 2017 was also the year of the Fed Cup call-up, in which the relationship with Garbin was further consolidated. The following year came the first trials on the major circuit, without great results, while in 2019 she won her first semi-final in a 125 in Karlsruhe (in the meantime, the Itf titles she took home were seven in total) and 'tasted' Roland Garros by passing the qualifiers and reaching the first round (in which she was defeated by Daria Kasatkina).

In 2021 the important step forward with the first title in a 125 in Bol and above all with victory in the Wta 250 in Portoroz (in the final against the American Alison Riske). After the setback in a grey 2022, the following year marked a remarkable leap: the Wta 1000s were no longer prohibitive, the Tuscan reached the quarters in Cincinnati, and the eighths in Beijing. Not only that: in Zhengzhou, Paolini reached her first semi-final in a Wta 500. The year '23 was also the year of the magnificent test in the Billie Jean King Cup, in which Jasmine was decisive both for the conquest of the semifinals against France and Germany and even more so for that of the final: it was her to score the decisive point against the Slovenian Tamara Zidanšek.

What was it that made Jasmine literally 'explode' in 2024? That allowed her to win a Wta 1000 (in Dubai against Anna Kalinskaya) and then to win two Slam finals when, until the year before, she had never gone beyond the first round in London and beyond the second in Paris? In her press conference at Wimbledon after her semi-final victory over Croatia's Donna Vekic, Jasmine said that she had worked hard with Furlan on her movement speed and had been able to impart strength to her groundstrokes (starting with her favourite, the forehand).