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 at the family’s seaside home in Alassio, in the province of Savona:
My father bought a plot of land there and built a villa in 1935 so that, frail as I was, I could breathe the sea air. I first saw the tennis courts from a little pink cottage. When I was six, my father, who was a great sportsman, said to me, “Now is the time to choose a sport to play.” I replied that I’d like to try playing tennis, and so the adventure began. I joined 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 partisan with 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 mix-up, both a classical and a scientific high school diploma, he enrolled in law school in Milan (where he was a classmate of Alberto Arbasino), before transferring to Urbino, where in 1956 he graduated with a law degree with the thesis “L’influenza della religione negli istituti dell’antico jus civilis di Roma” (The Influence of Religion in the Institutions of Ancient Roman Civil Law). His thirst for knowledge is also evident in his life choices: “During my tennis career, I tried to schedule tournaments to coincide with places of human or cultural interest. Once I became a journalist, I continued this habit because I loved writing about travel.” (Il cantastorie instancabile, p. 85).
Bachelor of Laws degree, Urbino, July 14, 1956
Tennis history
Gianni Clerici’s junior career was quite impressive: 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 recalled by Clerici himself, date back to the 1950s: these were first-round exits at Wimbledon (1953—his account of the trip from Como to London in a Fiat 500 is memorable) and Roland Garros (1954). It was in doubles, however, that he achieved his most significant results: two Italian junior titles partnered with Fausto Gardini (1947 and 1948) and several international tournaments won first with Umberto ‘Bitti’ Bergamo, then with the Brazilian Armando Vieira, but above all with Orlando Sirola. As determined and talented as he was, Gianni had to contend with the athletic and technical gap that emerged between him and the greats of his generation: Fausto Gardini, Beppe Merlo, Orlando Sirola, Umberto Bergamo, and Nicola Pietrangeli. After several hiatuses due to health issues, in the mid-1950s he stopped playing because of a serious jaundice infection contracted during the doubles final of the Lebanon International Championships: “I played a tournament in Beirut, which was an important tournament back then… Anyway, there in Beirut, playing under the sun for five hours—that desert sun—I kept drinking water, but there was no bottled water, and I caught a bug or something, and I got what was then called viral jaundice. The kind where you turn completely yellow. And there was no cure. So I was in the hospital for six months; they kept giving me blood transfusions, and I was given a death sentence by the very famous doctor from Milan. I remember him telling 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.
