Global Courant
Genaro Olivieri’s fairy tale continues to add chapters at Roland Garros. The 24-year-old Argentine, who until this week had not played a match on the world’s largest tennis circuit, reached the third round of the second Grand Slam of the season after defeating the Italian Andrea Vavassori 7-6 (7), 3-6, 6-4 and 7-6 (3) in three hours and 19 minutes of action on field 13.
“I have to stop the ball and stay to sleep inside the field. I can’t believe it,” he released with a smile from ear to ear and after having celebrated looking up at the sky to dedicate the victory to his father again, Carlos, a former pelotari, who died during the pandemic.
Olivieri, a native of Bragado and from the same generation as Francisco Cerúndolo and Tomás Martín Etcheverry, will not have it easy in his next presentation on the brick dust of Bois de Boulogne. The Danish Holger Rune, seeded sixth, awaits him, who will also arrive rested after advancing without playing due to the retirement of Gael Monfils, who withdrew from the tournament after the dramatic victory over Argentine Sebastián Báez.
Against Vavassori, who, like the Argentine, had made it through qualifying, Olivieri had to find the necessary variations to disable his rival’s powerful serve. He started very well in the first set and took it out in a close tie break, but in the second he suffered a quick break of serve and was taken aback. However, he adjusted the screws and little by little he was putting the Italian against the ropes and thus he was able to close the game with a wide margin.
Olivieri and his serve. Photo: EFE
“The match was very complicated. He played very high for me and made it very difficult for me. I had to start moving my legs and start hitting him. Because if I wasn’t always falling back. With that mobility, I also began to serve better. I began to vary more. The serve costs me a lot because of my height (1.70 metres). Technically it’s not bad, but I have to be calm and concentrated to serve,” said Olivieri without hiding his virtues and defects at all. In the first round he had needed five sets to take out French youth Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, who had entered the main draw on a wild card.
And he continued with brutal sincerity: “I arrived with a margin to close the game. Anyway, my hand always trembles a bit when closing. You know: your legs shake. Luckily I closed it well. I don’t even remember the last point”.
Far from being intimidated, Olivieri has full confidence for what is to come without realizing that on the other side of the net will be a top ten and one of the candidates to go far in Paris. “I saw that Rune was coming because Monfils got off. But it’s one more game. It’s going to be the first time I’ve played in a stadium. But the pitch has the same size as all the other pitches. So you have to concentrate and hit it to Go ahead,” emphasized the Argentine, who has already guaranteed a check for $154,103.
Genaro Olivieri, tennis and love for dad
Genaro Olivieri grew up admiring Rafael Nadal. The Mallorcan’s willpower, his work ethic and his dedication, which led him to be one of the best in history, are qualities that the Argentine tries to emulate every day. Perhaps for this reason -or perhaps because of a wink of fate-, it was on the brick dust of Roland Garros, the same one on which his idol built an incomparable reign, where the man from Buenos Aires lives his most important week in the most important circuit of men’s tennis.
Olivieri, 231st in the ranking, is part of that talented new generation of players led by Francisco Cerúndolo, 23rd in the world. Genaro started playing tennis after a doctor recommended that his parents take him to practice sports to combat his high cholesterol. It didn’t take long for him to stand out among the boys in his category and very quickly earned the title of “great Argentine promise”.
In those early years, his fascination with Nadal was born. He liked Spanish so much that he even copied her looks to go out on the pitch.
Upside down. Olivieri shows great tennis. Photo: EFE
“I dressed like him. It was difficult because in Argentina you couldn’t find the long pants that I used. So I bought Nike pants a size bigger, which was longer on me and I made some hem so that they wouldn’t fall off and I could play comfortable. Everything to be more like Nadal. I had muscular ones too. And, later when he started playing with short sleeves, I went to short sleeves. He was my idol and will always be. There is no explanation for what he achieved skinny. It’s impressive”, he told a few days ago in a chat with the site BATennis.com.
And, with a laugh, he added: “I was sad when I found out that I was not going to play in Paris this year. How crazy it would have been to face him here, something crazy! I would have played the whole game crying.”
Olivieri was one of the best juniors of his litter. He won three titles (all in 2015) and reached the eighth step of the ITF world ranking in June 2016, the year in which he played the four Grand Slams and signed his best performance with the Roland Garros quarterfinals. .
Clenched fist for Olivieri, who now goes for Rune. Photo: EFE
He was also an advance at the ATP level. He got his first point in August 2014 at Future de La Rioja. To gauge his precociousness, Fran Cerúndolo and Tomás Etcheverry -two who are already entrenched among the best in the ranking today- did so two years later. And when Genaro entered the top 1,000 of the classification, in December 2016, the porteño was 1,930th and the platense, 1,756th.
His good performances caught the attention of Daniel Orsanic, then Director of Development of the AAT and Argentine captain of the Davis Cup, who took him as a sparring partner to the series that the albiceleste team, led by Juan Martín Del Potro, beat Italy through the quarterfinals, on their way to the unforgettable consecration.
During that duel in Pesaro, he told Clarín that he was very excited about making the leap to professionalism. “The most important moment of the race begins, the icing on the cake. But I’m not afraid, because I’ve been preparing for that all my life,” he said. But the transition cost him more than he expected.
He was advancing, but at a slower pace than the other boys in his age group (Would the difference in size have played a role?). Only in 2019 did he manage to add his first titles on the (former) Future circuit. In his eighth final, he won an M15 in Buenos Aires in July, when he was ranked 649th. And in November, as the 481st, he celebrated in an M25 at Naples.
In April 2021, he suffered a severe blow: his father, Carlos Olivieri, a renowned Argentine pelotari and the greatest promoter of his career, died. Genaro thought about quitting tennis, but he got up and in 2022 he took a big leap.
In November he finally won his first Challenger, in Montevideo, with a tough victory in the final against Etcheverry, who was already 85th, and days later he appeared on the 190th step of the ranking, his best position to date. His victory over Vavassori (148th) in the second round would allow him to break his own ceiling and get closer to the top 100 goal he set for this year.
Genaro Olivieri and his joy for his first title on the Challenger Tour. Instagram photo @genaolivieri4
“My dad supported me in every way, from psychologically to financially, in the end he even knew about tennis… He pushed me a lot, he wanted me to play more than me. He was my career and life partner. When he passed away I didn’t want to go back to to play, I had no motivation, but I came back and when I entered the field I had a sacred fire. Because I think that from somewhere they are watching me and enjoying me,” he said after the victory over Mpetshi Perricard.
Olivieri -who won his third ITF title in Tucumán last February- had once again enjoyed a court, but he had a pending account: the ATP circuit. He had played the Wimbledon and US Open qualifiers last year and the one in Australia in January, without being able to overcome them. Also the one in Houston, last April, again without luck. But he arrived in Paris confident, won all three matches in the qualifying round – he dropped a single set, in the third round against Adrian Andreev – and fulfilled his dream of getting into the main draw of the French Major.
He did not settle, On Tuesday he celebrated his first triumph at the highest level of professional tennis on the brick dust of Bois de Boulogne. And this Thursday he took another step. There, where his idol Nadal bathed in glory 14 times and with the strength that his father sends him from heaven, Genaro Olivieri continues to put bricks in his career. The dream at Roland Garros has just begun and he does not want to wake up.
