Talk:Adriano Panatta

Untitled

Adriano Panatta e' nel tennis italiano, quello che e' stato Maradona nel Napoli.

Wct?

What is Wct? It's som tournament but where does it wikilink to? (Wct is some copyright treaty).

POV

The article needs to be made more neutral in tone or have claims cited by multiple secondary sources. Issues include:

1. "...He is widely considered to be one of Italy's greatest ever tennis players..."
2. "...some fans consider him to be among the best clay court players in tennis history..."
3. "...He became a successful European junior player..."
4. "...Despite his power and perfect technique..."

Please remember this is an encyclopedia, not a sports almanac or tabloid newspaper. The Rambling Man on tour (talk) 07:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Rebuttal to the comment above

I was a ranked junior Player in Italy and a tennis fan in general. The article about Panatta is not biased but in my opinion expresses widespread opinions about Adriano Panatta by those tennis fans that had the chance to follow his career at the time he was an active player. While Panatta's career did not last as long as that of other world renown tennis greats, he was indeed one of the best players of his time on clay. Panatta defeated Borg several times and even defeated a very young and talented Connors. Let me consider the contested statements above one by one:

1. "...He is widely considered to be one of Italy's greatest ever tennis players..."

-- In Italy this is certainly true. There isn't one Italian I ever spoke to that does not consider Panatta the greatest Italian player ever. The runner up would be Nicola Pietrangeli but most italian fans would agree that Pietrangeli is a distant second.

1. "...some fans consider him to be among the best clay court players in tennis history..."

-- This is certainly true as well. "Among the best" is the key word here. He is not the best ever, but certainly he should make anyone's top 10 as judged by the caliber of players he defeated or had close matches with during his clay career.

1. "...He became a successful European junior player..."

-- That he was. Where success is defined as winning junior tournaments, he was one fo the best in Europe at that time.

1. "...Despite his power and perfect technique..."

Panatta's worst characteristic was his moodiness and consistency, but even a Panatta on a bad day had exquisite, classical tennis style and he was certainly a powerful player. In fact, Panatta was one of the last pure "Serve and Volley" players to defeat the baseline machines of the time on Clay (Borg, Vilas, etc.). By the late 70's it was clear that 2 handed backends and a baseline, top spin game would be the wave of the future, yet Panatta still played his serve and volley game in an impeccable manner. Panata could have starred in a 1950's film on "How to play tennis" as his style was very much based on the styles of the previous generation (Stan Smith, Rod Laver).

67.172.190.169 (talk) 03:30, 25 October 2009 (UTC) Corrado Conti