The Italian Tennis and Padel Federation announced on Monday that Nicola ‘Nicky’ Chirinsky Pietrangeli, an icon of Italian tennis, has died at the age of 92.
In 1964, Santana and I made a bet where the loser would pay for dinner. I kept the appointment and ten of us went out that evening, including our wives, and Manolo invited Luisito Suárez [a Spanish soccer player]. I spent my entire earnings from the tournament to cover the evening. Nicola Pietrangeli
Pietrangeli is the only Italian to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and the first from his country to win a Grand Slam trophy, triumphing at the French Open in 1959.
He defended that title a year later, and his record of two Grand Slam titles among Italian players was not broken until Jannik Sinner won his second consecutive Australian Open title in 2025, taking his total to three majors.
“I won $150 for the 1960 title, which covered two months’ rent for my house in Rome,” Pietrangeli told Gazzetta dello Sport in 2020.
Pietrangeli was also second at Roland Garros in 1961 and 1964, losing both finals to Spaniard Manuel Santana. He won the doubles title in Paris in 1959 with Orlando Sirola, and the mixed title with Britain’s Shirley Bloomer in 1958.
“In 1964, Santana and I made a bet where the loser would pay for dinner,” Pietrangeli said. “I fulfilled the agreement and ten of us went out that evening, including our wives, and Manolo invited Luisito Suárez [a Spanish soccer player]. I spent my entire earnings from the tournament on covering the evening.”
Pietrangeli also reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1960 and the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in 1957.
© Mrs. Dulce R. Stuart/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
With good looks as a movie star, Pietrangeli mixed with the jet set, including Marcello Mastroianni, Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale among his acquaintances.
On the court, it was his exceptional touch, movement and excellent backhand that helped him become one of the world’s leading clay court exponents in the late 1950s and 1960s, evidenced by the large show court named after him at the Foro Italico, home of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia.
In the Davis Cup, Pietrangeli holds the record for most aggregate wins and most singles wins, having played 164 matches for Italy in 66 draws.
His singles record was 78–32 and his doubles record was 42–12, while he also formed one half of the most successful Davis Cup doubles partnership with Sirola, with the pair winning 34 of their 42 matches together.
As a player, Pietrangeli led Italy to the Davis Cup final twice, losing both times to an Australian team featuring Rod Laver and Roy Emerson.
Pietrangeli finally lifted the Davis Cup trophy as captain in 1976, when he coached Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti, Paolo Bertolucci and Antonio Zugarelli to the title with a win over Chile, played amid Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
There were calls for Italy not to travel to Chile, but Pietrangeli insisted the team should go.
“That was really my biggest contribution for that final,” Pietrangeli said. “Without me, Italy would not have traveled to that final and we would not have won.”
Italy did not win the Davis Cup again until Sinner led the team to the title in 2023 and 2024; and then Matteo Berrettini and Flavio Cobolli led Italy to a third straight Davis Cup victory, and the first on home soil, in Bologna last month.
In 2022, Nicola Pietrangeli posed for a photo at the Foro Italico in Rome, home of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, where a show court is named after him.
© Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images
Pietrangeli was born in Tunis, then a French colony, to an Italian father and a Russian mother, and during the Allied occupation of Tunisia (1942-43) his father, Giulio, an amateur tennis player, was interned. Nicola started playing tennis in the prison camp, before the family moved to Rome, where he later became part of the youth team of Lazio football club.
At the age of 19, Pietrangeli turned to tennis and took part in the 1952 Italian Championships for the first time.
He played 19 times at the Championships, Wimbledon and reached the semi-finals in 1960, losing to Rod Laver, the year the right-hander was ranked third in the world.
He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1986, and twenty years later the second largest tennis stadium in the Foro Italico was named after him, the 3,000-seat Pietrangeli Stadium, where he wrote in his autobiography Se piove rimandiamo (When it rains, we postpone) that he would like his funeral to take place.
After his playing and coaching career ended, Pietrangeli became something of a ‘godfather’ of Italian tennis, and was a front-row fixture at the Foro Italico for the Italian Open, the tournament he had won in 1957 and 1961, beating Laver in the latter final.
In 2006, the statue-lined Pallacorda pitch at the Foro Italico, considered one of the most picturesque stadiums on the circuit, was renamed Stadio Pietrangeli.
Pietrangeli had three sons – Marco, Giorgio, who died on July 4, 2025 at the age of 59, and Filippo – in a 15-year marriage to Susanna Artero, and he also had a long-term relationship with Italian TV presenter Licia Colo.
Pietrangeli was in declining health after suffering a hip fracture in December 2024.
Nicola ‘Nicky’ Chirinsky Pietrangeli – born September 11, 1933 / died December 1, 2025
Italian tennis legend Nicola Pietrangeli (L) raises the trophy as he celebrates winning the Davis Cup tennis tournament with members of team Italy at the Martin Carpena Sports Hall in Malaga on November 26, 2023.
© Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images
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