Lorenzo Sonego

Lorenzo Sonego is the Turin-born right-hander who turned a heavy first serve and a swing-from-the-heels forehand into a top-20 career. Born in 1995, he came up through Torino FC's youth soccer setup before committing to tennis at 11 under longtime coach Gipo Arbino, turned pro in 2013, and ground his way up through the ITF Futures and Challenger ranks. His first ATP title arrived on the clay of Antalya in 2019, the breakthrough that confirmed a ceiling higher than his ranking let on.

The game is built for entertainment and risk. Sonego pairs a two-handed backhand with a forehand he hits flat and enormous, leaning on first-strike serving and aggressive baseline pressure rather than patient construction. It's a high-variance style — when the serve and forehand are connecting he can blow anyone off the court, and when they aren't the unforced errors pile up. The on-court energy, fist-pumps and all, has made him one of the tour's more watchable mid-tier ball-strikers.

His résumé carries some genuine scalps. Sonego owns multiple ATP titles and reached a career-high inside the top 25, with his signature wins coming over the sport's biggest names and a long-awaited maiden Grand Slam quarterfinal at age 29. He's a fixture of Italy's deep men's generation alongside Jannik Sinner, Lorenzo Musetti and Matteo Berrettini, and the home crowd at the Italian Open has long made him a favorite during the Rome clay swing.

Now ranked 66, Sonego sits in the familiar territory of a veteran chasing his level against a younger, deeper field. He remains dangerous on any surface his serve travels on, and events like Monte Carlo and the European clay run remain the stretch where his ball-striking gives him the most upside.