Once upon a time, there were the roaring Eighties—a highly fertile sporting era filled with epochal duels and legendary rivalries: from the first clashes between the fierce teammates Senna and Prost, through the masterful free kicks of Maradona and Platini along the Naples-Turin axis, to the eternal showdown between Bird’s Celtics and ‘Magic’ Johnson’s Lakers. If we had to pick tennis icons to represent that time, the most likely pairs would be Borg-McEnroe and Navrátilová-Evert, the circuit’s dominant figures and style icons. Back then, match commentaries tended to stick closely to straightforward play-by-play accounts, leaving little room for technical analysis or off-court reflections.

But the season was ripe for a radical change: in a context that risked becoming a bit stale, Gianni Clerici and Rino Tommasi emerged, bringing with them years of journalistic experience and a very welcome breath of fresh air. In the innovative and successful format of paired commentary that had launched them into the spotlight, their unmistakable styles proved incredibly complementary—so much so that their names became inseparable, almost like a magic formula. ‘Clerici-Tommasi’ in their broadcasts went far beyond just the sporting facts: the hosts Gianni and Rino took viewers by the hand, guiding them on a wonderful journey from the court to the locker rooms, through the backstage tunnels and the highly secured practice courts. Boredom was out of the question! The match’s events were often just a prelude to stories of all kinds, blending players’ professional lives with their private affairs, sprinkled with power intrigues and gossip fit for a celebrity magazine.

Where the players’ rallies provided fertile ground for the most obscure statistics, effortlessly delivered by Tommasi—whom Gianni nicknamed ‘ComputeRino’—any break between points was the perfect chance to dive into rich anecdotes and colorful digressions, the specialty of Clerici himself, aka ‘Dottor Divago‘.

And so the journey was one of discovering the people behind the athletes, sparking affection not only for the great champions but, over time, also for the narrators themselves, with all their quirks and passions, their endless love for tennis, and that exceptional ability to make you feel at ease—as if you were sitting in their living room, sipping tea, casually brushed by a John McEnroe volley.

Today, exactly three years after Gianni Clerici’s passing and about five months since Rino Tommasi’s death, we like to remember them through an excerpt from the chapter dedicated to them by Alessandro Martini and Maurizio Francesconi—aptly titled ‘Clerici & Tommasi, a de facto couple’—in the recent book (Stories of Tennis. Champions, Matches, and Quirks of the Most Beautiful Sport in the World) , published by Einaudi:

Their commentaries remain extraordinary and unforgettable. So much so that even today, many of us inclined towards nostalgia miss them deeply. We miss their anecdotes, their jokes, their cleverly coined nicknames. We miss their expertise, but above all the ‘lightness’ far from any rhetoric. […] For many fans, they are the key to entering the mysterious world of tennis, with expertise combined with utmost enjoyment. In their free and ironic style, they comment on and travel back and forth through tennis history, celebrating champions long gone, evoking famous episodes and little-known stories that settle in viewers’ minds and remain as precious knowledge. While Tommasi comments point by point on every match, Clerici talks about other things. He quotes, jokes, mocks. […] It’s impossible not to remember one without the other, always together. Unforgettable Clerici and Tommasi. A true pair.