On a blazingly sunny morning in March, the 22-year-old Italian tennis star Jannik Sinner could possibly be discovered on the sprawling grounds of a ranch-style dwelling he’d rented within the Coachella Valley. Sinner was there for the annual match at Indian Wells, the place he was trying to lengthen a months-long blitz of a profitable streak. I used to be there to ask Sinner about this streak, which culminated in his first Grand Slam title, on the Australian Open in January. His outstanding run, which now features a commanding win on the Miami Open final week, has propelled him to world No. 2 and made him the speak of Italy, a soccer-obsessed nation the place tennis doesn’t usually make the entrance web page.

However if you get in a room with Jannik Sinner, it’s straightforward to be pushed to distraction by one thing else completely: His hair. It is crimson, and it’s spectacular. It tumbles forth in a mop of cherubic curls. It’s one cause he is named the Fox, a nickname he picked up in grade college. And it’s partly why his infamous superfans, the Carota Boys, present as much as his tournaments wearing carrot costumes. As we sat speaking in a cabana that served as his dressing room for Vogue’s photograph shoot, a stylist scrunched Sinner’s curls into larger, bouncier heights. After I requested Sinner how he manages to stuff his curls into the snug-fitting hats he wears throughout matches, he answered the query with no hesitation, as if he’d been anticipating it. “It is a expertise,” he mentioned.

Sinner demonstrated the transfer in a two-part movement. “You set the hairs again like this,” he mentioned, pulling his curls straight again and holding them down. “And you place the hat like this,” he mentioned, slipping a white cap over his head, again to entrance. He confirmed me the maneuver once more, this time at a quicker clip. “However the factor is, this one normally stays out,” he mentioned, pulling at errant tufts that had been peeking out from below the edges of his hat. At a sure level, Sinner defined, the curls start to exert a lot stress on the cap that the cap begins to slip round on his head, after which it’s time for a haircut. “When the hat is transferring, that’s after I know I’ve to go to the hairdresser.”

Sinner is an athlete of a number of abilities. Rising up within the small mountain city of Sesto, within the Dolomites close to the Austrian border, he was an achieved ski racer—he received a nationwide championship in big slalom at age eight and positioned second at age twelve. (Sesto is in South Tyrol, a largely German-speaking area, and German is Sinner’s first language.) Within the heat months he performed soccer and tennis, and when he was round fourteen, the previous Italian tennis professional Alex Vittur, who’s now Sinner’s supervisor, made him a suggestion: Transfer to Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, and prepare full-time at Riccardo Piatti’s tennis academy.

Sinner’s rankings in snowboarding had began to slide. “I used to be profitable rather a lot after I was younger in snowboarding, and in tennis I by no means received,” he informed me. “After which slowly I began to lose in snowboarding, as a result of bodily I used to be not able to compete. I used to be at all times fairly skinny and all the things.” In comparison with the split-second margins of ski-racing, Sinner defined, tennis felt extra forgiving. “The explanation why I selected tennis was, in tennis you may make errors. You possibly can lose factors however you possibly can nonetheless win the match. In snowboarding, in case you make one mistake, one massive mistake, you can’t win.”

Sinner made the transfer, forsaking his dad, Johann, who labored as a prepare dinner at a neighborhood ski lodge; his mother, Siglinde, then a waitress on the identical restaurant; and his older brother, Marc. In Bordighera, Sinner lived with the younger household of a Croatian coach who labored on the academy, Luka Cvjetkovic. “That they had two youngsters, one canine. I got here into this household and it was a pleasant feeling. Clearly I missed my mother and father and all my buddies, and typically the opposite sports activities, however it was an excellent expertise for me. So I simply tried to maintain going. From in the future to a different I used to be altering my life.”

Sinner appears so even-tempered, on courtroom and in dialog, it’s laborious to think about he harbors any kind of cutthroat edge, however it’s clear he was precociously aggressive from a younger age. Two years after he enrolled in Piatti’s academy, and already tired of junior occasions, Sinner went professional. The 2019 season was “a changer,” as he put it. He received a match in Bergamo after getting into on a wildcard, and, 9 months later, the Subsequent Gen ATP Finals. In early 2022, not lengthy after he broke into the highest 10, Sinner overhauled his teaching crew, parting methods with Piatti and hiring Simone Vagnozzi and Darren Cahill. “I wished to throw myself into the fireplace,” he has mentioned of that call. “I wished to strive a special methodology.”