I’m standing at the entrance to the red clay court at the Bollettieri IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., watching a 14-year-old, six-foot tall kid with a 37-match winning streak fire backhand crosscourts at a hitting partner and trying, very hard, not to get overly excited.
I’ve seen too many 14 and even 15-year-olds who look as if they will, within five or six years, be ruling professional tennis. I’ve also seen too much happen to these prodigies — a sudden loss of interest in the game, girls, overbearing parents who push them over the edge, even video games.
But I’m also aware that this chatterbox teenager from the little seaside town of Porto San Georgio, Italy, might just be different, and we’ll find out a lot more about him in a couple weeks when, at a very tender age, he plays his first professional event — a $15,000 ITF Futures in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Nervous? Gianluigi Quinzi has all the Italian gestures down pat. “No,” he says with a toss of his head. “These guys are going to be 21 years old. They have pressure. I’m 14. If I lose, nothing happens.”
He’s going to have to get through a few rounds of qualifying to reach the main draw, but nothing in his patois suggests any worries. “I want to get one ATP point!” he exclaims. He sounds as if he’d like somehow to encase that point in a frame, the way people do when they’ve earned their first dollar.
“I think if I play good, the way I have been playing, I can win matches.”
He’s good enough that he’s attracted the attention of former Argentine coach to the stars Eduardo Infantino when he’s overseas. At the Bollettieri Academy, he works with former Argentine ATP pro Eduardo Medica, and he’s pushing him hard in practices to get ready for this first pro event.
It means stepping up the pace. “Juniors play soft. Pros play more aggressive,” said Quinzi, who obviously has been made well aware of what it will take to move to the next level. He’s clearly looking forward to Mexico, though this is probably not going to be the start of an uninterrupted series of professional events.
They’re taking it slowly with the kid. Step by step, as they like to say in tennis. This ITF tournament is just to see how he reacts against much stiffer competition.
This is going to be well beyond the series of Grade 5 events he’s won this year. Grade 5 is well down the pecking order in the quality of junior tennis, but 37 wins in a row is 37 wins in a row, and most of those matches by 6-0, 6-1, or 6-2.
He’s ranked No. 344 among ITF juniors, 11th best in Italy, though the young players in front of him are all older, and most much older.
I asked him if he could remember the last time he lost a match. He began fiddling with the wooden cross hanging from his neck — the one his grandfather gave him and the one that he kisses after every point he wins.
“Uh. . .was it? . . . no, wait. It was this year. OK, I remember. It was in Spain, on clay.”
He hit his first tennis ball at age 2, encouraged by his father, Luka Quinzi, who is standing next to me at courtside, pensively watching his son train on the red clay.
“He’s six-feet tall already at 14. How tall is he going to be?” I ask Luka. “I don’t want him to grow so much,” says Quinzi, who himself is now just barely taller than his son. “I don’t want a Karlovic or an Isner,” he says, joking.
What’s his son like, personally? “He’s half-Italian, half-American. He likes sports, music and he likes to speak, speak, speak.”
Gianluigi grew into the game quickly and, by age 8, he had a scholarship at the Bollettieri Academy. It’s been something of a cultural adjustment.
Luka laughed. “We Italians like to sleep. Americans like to accelerate too much. We have to find the middle way,” he said.
How good can he be? I ask, knowing that a father’s answer might be naturally inflated. “I don’t know,” Luka replies. But, clearly, he is expecting great things. That’s what Gianluigi wants, too, though it’s not do or die time yet.
“I have my father’s strength (of character), but, mentally, I’m more like my mother. She was a champion skier. My mom says it’s OK to lose. My dad says you have to win, you have to win.”
But as involved as Luka is in his son’s future, he stays out of the coaching. “We have a team,” he says. “When my son goes to Mexico, I go back to Italy.”
After a couple of pro events in Mexico, Gianluigi will be back at the academy to play the annual Eddie Herr junior tournament, but only the 16s, and then the Orange Bowl 16s on Key Biscayne.
Before I leave, I drop in on Nick Bollettieri, and mention that I’ve come down to Bradenton to look at young Gianluigi. Bollettieri lights up.
“Let me tell you something,” he says, prefacing one of the most important things he could say about Quinzi. “That boy may be only 14 years old, but he’s not afraid.”
