By LORENZO MUSETTI arrives in the Melbourne suburb of Abbotsford dressed in an all-green tracksuit. We’re on a time crunch, so straight away he’s getting changed into something far more elevated and is soon head-to-toe in Bottega Veneta. In his new clobber, he moves through the studio with an unmistakeable grace, greeting the crew quietly, politely, while taking in the racks of clothing lined up for the shoot. He’s been rushed around Melbourne all week, fulfilling different ambassadorial commitments, and is clearly relishing the opportunity to sit down while we run him through the plan.
In the week preceding his Esquire cover shoot, Musetti made a deep run at the Hong Kong Open, catapulting him into the top five on the ATP rankings for the first time in his career. Despite this, he puts on no airs; tall, lean and bronzed, he exudes only an understated self-confidence. Someone in the crew whispers that he has fire in his eyes. Musetti doesn’t hear it – or at least he pretends not to – but it’s true.
Melbourne is a city he knows well now. “I have nice memories of Melbourne,” he says, with a knowing nod. He won the Junior Australian Open here in 2019 to become the highest-ranked junior in the world. “It’s a city with a lot of energy. You can see that from the Australian Open crowd. I can see that Melbourne is a city where sport is a passion and they have a huge passion for tennis.”
The relentless nature of the ATP circuit means that Musetti never stays in one city for long. He’s already familiar with the airports, hotels and courts that blur together as part of the routine of professional tennis. Then again, as the home of the first grand slam on the calendar, Melbourne still registers.
Musetti sees this year’s tournament as an opportunity. Beyond a chance to accomplish his lifelong dream of winning a grand slam, projections show Musetti is primed to move to as high as third in the rankings with a deep run. Knowing this, he acknowledges that the pressure feels heightened. “I try not to pay attention to the rankings,” he says. “But it’s tough sometimes because with social media, it’s hard to avoid.”
When I point out that he could rise as high as No. 3 with a strong showing, he doesn’t deflect. “Well, unfortunately, I know that,” he says, chuckling. “I will try to take it as an opportunity and not put too much pressure on myself. We live constantly with the pressure of results, of trying to do better every day that we step on court.”
By now, the feeling of pressure is familiar for Musetti. But that doesn’t mean it’s gotten any easier to handle.
WHEN MUSETTI was growing up, tennis was not as popular in Italy as it is today. There, football has long been king, and its gravitational pull is hard to escape. “At that time, most of the kids were still going to football. I was the one who was a little different from the others,” he says. Italy had, after all, won the FIFA World Cup in the same year (2006) Musetti first picked up a racquet. “For me, it always felt natural, you know, the passion.”
It was from his father, Francesco, that Musetti inherited his passion for tennis. The senior Musetti played as an amateur and put a racquet in his son’s hand when the boy was four years old. “He was the first one that showed me tennis,” Musetti says. “He bought me a tennis racquet when I was four and I started to play with him. After that it almost became a job – and here we are.” Was he taken with tennis right away, or was there a period of courtship? According to Musetti, it was love at first sight. “I fell in love with tennis and I started to play each year more and more.”
It was around this time that Musetti found his one-handed backhand, which is almost an anachronism in modern tennis. Thirty years ago, the one-handed backhand was the norm. But now it is a rarity, though usually a visually appealing one. In fact, Musetti is the only member of the current top 10 to use one. Zooming out, only seven of the top 100 use the classical style. For Musetti, however, it has always felt like the most fluid way to play.
“Honestly, for me, it always felt natural to play with a one-handed backhand,” he says. “Now tennis is moving in the direction of the double-handed backhand because it’s a little bit easier with the speed of nowadays, but I like to be the one who is different from the others. I like to keep the tradition of having a one-handed backhand alive.”
It’s a romantic answer and he knows it. When asked if he’d teach his own kids to play that way, he laughs it off. “No, honestly. It’s more about the aesthetic. I think it looks better than the double-handed backhand, but for the purpose of winning and being more functional, it is probably better to have the two-handed backhand.”
My family know that sometimes I will be out of the house for two months. It can be really difficult, but if you want to achieve something, you have to make sacrifices like this.
Growing up, Musetti idolised Fabio Fognini, who was the standard-bearer of Italian tennis at the time. “Fabio Fognini was the leader of the past generation of Italian tennis. He inspired so many kids, including me,” he says. “I had the luck to share the last three or four years of his career with him. We became really good friends and that’s something that I will never forget.”
Musetti is already the third-highest ranked Italian men’s tennis player of all time, behind Sinner and another whose name I can’t recall while on set. “Panatta,” Musetti quickly informs me, referring to the 1976 French Open champion Adriano Panatta – like his name is common knowledge. “He won a grand slam.”
Today, in Italy, tennis seems to be more popular than ever. “Definitely, yes,” Musetti says, when asked if the sport is growing at home. “Now I think it’s starting to be, with the great help of Jannik, at the same level as football. It’s really cool to inspire young kids who want to play tennis.”
At time of writing, four Italians sit inside the top 30, all of whom are within a year of Musetti’s age. Ten years ago, the highest-ranked Italian sat at 40 in the world. Now, the Davis Cup has become an annual display of Italian dominance: the nation has won the event three years running. Do they have it on lock for the next decade? “Well, I hope so,” Musetti says, with a wry smile. “We are going to try to chase it again this year, for sure.”
Team tournaments, where friendships tend to be forged, matter to the pro player, whose lifestyle is so helter-skelter. “We are used to it,” Musetti says of being away from home for long periods at a time. It’s doubly hard for Musetti, who already has two children of his own – he and his partner welcomed their second son late last year. “Having two kids at home and my girlfriend, it’s not as easy as it looks, because sometimes you’re struggling and you’re missing them. But when you have the full support of your family, that’s what really matters. They know my job. They know that sometimes I will be out of the house for two months. It can be really difficult, but if you want to achieve something, you have to make sacrifices like this.”
MUSETTI turned pro a year after winning the junior title at the 2019 Australian Open. In just his second appearance on the ATP tour, he defeated three-time major winner Stan Wawrinka. The following year, still a teenager, he made a run to the fourth round at Roland-Garros.
The pieces were falling into place. He added strength without sacrificing technique and his first titles followed. In 2022, he defeated a 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz to win the Hamburg Open and surged into the top 30. In 2023, he entered the top 15; in 2024, he reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and became the first Italian man in 100 years to win an Olympic medal in tennis, defeating Taylor Fritz and Alex Zverev before bowing out against Novak Djokovic in the semifinals and upsetting Félix Auger-Alias Sime in the bronze-medal match.
Musetti entered 2025 ranked 16th, but those with keen judgment could sense a breakthrough coming. It ended up being a career-best year for Musetti, who made the final of the Monte Carlo Masters, the semifinals of the French Open, the quarterfinals of the US Open, and, for the first time in his career, the ATP Finals.
That brings us to now, in which Musetti is a top-five player, a fixture in the second week of majors and an eye-catching stylistic outlier. Rather than chasing the game as it’s played, he’s trusted the version he believes in. In so doing so, he has arrived at a place where the big results feel close enough to touch.
ON THE COURT, Musetti’s game is built on grace, variety and adaptability. Off the court, he’s drawn to the same principles. During the shoot, he slips into a pair of high-waisted pants and grins: “Eighties,” he says approvingly. A de Bethune watch peeks out from under his cuff – a trophy piece if there ever was one – but he says he has another that’s even “more elegant”.
He’s more than comfortable around luxury fashion pieces like the Bottega Veneta he wears throughout the shoot. High fashion’s increasing presence in tennis feels, for him, entirely natural. “It’s an aspect that I have always liked,” he says. “Being Italian and having a big high-fashion culture, it is an honour to work with Bottega. It’s also an opportunity to share, with the tennis world, a different side of me.”
That other side has always been there. When he won the Australian Open juniors at 17, he shot his first cover for Esquire Italia. “It was my first shoot with fashion,” he says. “I was only, like, 17, but I enjoyed it.” What followed was a gradual diversification of his interests. “After that, I started to build a career outside of tennis, which I think is becoming more and more important.”
Still, tennis remains at the centre of his world. And at the very top of the sport right now, there is a clear hierarchy. After two decades under the reign of a Big Three, tennis now has a Big Two, comprising Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The pair have won a combined eight Grand Slams in a row, and barring injuries, they look well placed to continue that streak for the foreseeable future. That is, unless a new challenger emerges to upend the status quo.
Musetti believes he can eventually unseat the big two, but he’ll have his work cut out for him. He has beaten Alcaraz once – in that Hamburg final back in 2022 – while he’s zero-and-three against Sinner, their most recent meeting happening in the quarterfinals of the 2025 US Open.
While Musetti and Sinner are compatriots, that is where the obvious similarities end. Their temperaments, playing styles and the way they’ve ascended through the ATP rankings could scarcely be more different. While Sinner is celebrated for his impregnable and power-laden – some would say robotic – baseline game, Musetti is known for his flair and emotion – and that distinctive backhand. Where Musetti has incrementally worked his way up from the juniors to ITF tourneys to the top 100 and eventually the top five, Sinner advanced in leaps and bounds, barely competing on the junior circuit before jumping straight into the top 100 and hovering around the top 10 before becoming the world No. 1 immediately following his first Grand Slam win.
Despite the stranglehold Alcaraz and Sinner have, for now, on men’s tennis, Musetti believes he can win a grand slam. If you ask him whether he can win the 2026 Australian Open, however, he doesn’t overreach. “I try not to think too many matches ahead,” he says. “I try to take every match as a singular one and take it step by step towards the main goal, which is winning a grand slam. It’s a dream and it’s something that I’m really working hard to try to achieve, but in a slam there’s a lot of matches before you get close to the final. You have to go match by match and not think too far ahead.”
That dream sits alongside a more controllable ambition: improvement. “Definitely, yes,” he says when I ask if there are areas of his game he can still finetune. “If not, that would be a problem because, of course, at 23, there’s still a lot of room to improve in every side of the game. I think starting from technique, tactics, experience, physique, mentality. There’s a lot of things that I can improve.”
That’s quite a list, but one that reveals Musetti’s humility. He knows where he is and he knows where he needs to go.
THE DRAW for the 2026 Australian Open is announced during our shoot. Musetti’s barely processed it before I’m asking for his reaction. He’s been drawn in the same quarter as Novak Djokovic, a 10-time AO champion. If Musetti is unnerved, he doesn’t show it. “Novak obviously has a lot of experience here and always plays really well,” he says. “But I’m going to focus on myself and just try to do what I do best.”
That leads to another question: what is it, exactly that Musetti does best? What’s the one quality that has led him to where he is now? “It’s probably the passion that I have for tennis,” Musetti offers. “And maybe a mix between talent and work ethic and believing in myself.”
As the shoot winds down, the camera remains trained on Musetti. “I’m not really a natural,” he says, almost apologetically, as our photographer directs him to shift this way and that.
For what it’s worth, I disagree. Really, it’s an odd thing to hear from someone who looks this comfortable in front of the lens. It’s more than that, though. Musetti looks every bit like what modern tennis is becoming: stylish, self-aware, a global juggernaut. The fire in his eyes hasn’t dimmed. If anything, it’s burning brighter than it was even in his late teens. Musetti’s first cover story for Esquire Italia had the cover line ‘Astro Nascente’ – or ‘Rising Star’. Six years on, not only is that star still rising, no one knows how high it might go.
Digi Op: Jack Younger
