Giovanni Emilio Clerici, known to everyone as Gianni, was born in Como on July 24, 1930, to Luigi, an entrepreneur in the oil industry, and Lucia Castelli. He spent much of his childhood in the seaside resort of Alassio, in the province of Savona:
My father bought some land there and built a villa in 1935 so that, frail as I was, I could breathe the sea air. I saw the first tennis courts from a little pink house. When I was six, my father, who was a great sportsman, said to me, “Now it’s time to choose a sport to play.” I replied that I would like to try playing tennis, and so the adventure began. I attended the Hanbury Tennis Club, built by the English lord of the same name, Daniel, a benefactor who had already endowed Alassio with a hospital, and took lessons from the coach, also British, D.H. Sweet.
The young Clerici therefore chose tennis, which would become the love of his life, passionately pursuing it in all its facets: first as a player, then as a journalist writing about it in newspapers, and finally as a commentator and author of novels and poetry collections.
Years of training
Alberto Arbasino in 1963 (Clerici Fund)
During the Resistance, Clerici contributed to the cause as a courier in the mountains around Lake Como: “My father was a member of the GAP (Partisan Action Groups), who used me to transport Sten submachine guns, which I hid in my tennis bag” (Il cantastorie instancabile, p. 21). In the 1950s, however, he served in the Fifth Regiment as a ‘simple Alpine mule driver’, a role from which he was discharged for health reasons. After obtaining, due to a curious misunderstanding, both a classical and a scientific diploma, he enrolled in law school in Milan (where he was a classmate of Alberto Arbasino), before moving to Urbino, where in 1956 he graduated in law with a thesis entitled “The influence of religion in the institutions of ancient Roman civil law.” His thirst for knowledge was also evident in his life choices: “During my tennis career, I tried to coincide tournaments with places of human or cultural interest. When I became a journalist, I continued this habit because I loved writing about travel” (Il cantastorie instancabile, p. 85).
Tennis pastimes
Gianni Clerici’s junior career was highly respectable: as a singles player in 1950, he reached the Italian junior final and won the “Coppa de Galea” in Vichy, a sort of Under-20 World Championship; in 1952, he won the “Monte Carlo New Eve Tournament.” His only appearances in Grand Slam tournaments, often fondly remembered by Clerici himself, date back to the 1950s: he was eliminated in the first round at Wimbledon (1953, memorable for his account of the journey in a Fiat 500 from Como to London) and Roland Garros (1954). However, it was in doubles that he achieved his most significant results: two Italian junior titles paired with Fausto Gardini (1947 and 1948) and several international tournaments won first with Umberto ‘Bitti’ Bergamo, then with Brazilian Armando Vieira, but above all with Orlando Sirola. However stubborn and talented he was, Gianni had to contend with the athletic and technical gap that had developed between him and the greats of his generation: Fausto Gardini, Beppe Merlo, Orlando Sirola, Umberto Bergamo, and Nicola Pietrangeli. After several interruptions due to health problems, in the mid-1950s he stopped playing because of a serious jaundice infection contracted during the doubles final of the International Championships in Lebanon: “I played in a tournament in Beirut, which was an important tournament at the time… Anyway, there in Beirut, playing under the sun for five hours, desert sun, I kept drinking water, and there was no mineral water, and I caught a bug, something, and I got what was then called jaundice, from a virus. The kind that turns you all yellow. And there was no cure. So I was in the hospital for six months, they kept changing my blood, and I was diagnosed with death by the famous Milan doctor. I remember him saying to me, ‘You know, I’ve seen a case like yours before, Clerici, unfortunately it ended tragically’” (interviewed by Rivista Studio in 2012).
Gianni Clerici (left) with Fausto Gardini, Bormio 1948.Gianni Clerici (right) at the Coppa de Galea, Vichy 1950.
