During the Special Sessions with top coaches that brought I Tennis Foundation’s scholarship athletes to Turin in November, the Foundation – together with its Official Partner Synergie Italia – organised a Round Table titled “Tennis vs. Business 40-40: a fair match!”, hosted in the beautiful setting of the Hilton Hotel.
The event brought together training, sport and the corporate world in front of more than 100 participants, confirming the growing importance of dialogue between high-level tennis and business environments.
The evening was hosted by former WTA Top 300 Stefania Chieppa, who introduced the Little Tennis Champions 2025–26 programme and presented the speakers:
- Gipo Arbino, long-time coach of Lorenzo Sonego
- Ivan Ljubicic, former world No. 3 and Roger Federer’s coach for the last seven years of his career
- Emilio Sanchez, former ATP No. 1 in doubles, ATP No. 7 in singles and founder of four international tennis academies
- Claudia Porchietto, Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Piedmont Region
- Alessandro Belluzzo, Professor at the European School of Economics
- Simone Bongiovanni, co-founder of I Tennis Foundation and team manager of the Little Tennis Champions 21–26 project
Also attending was Dr. Marco Verga, National Vice President of AIDP, who expressed his support for I Tennis Foundation and its charitable activities.
The event opened with a welcome from Daniela Stuppi, Marketing Director of Synergie Italia, who underlined the value of the partnership: “The relationship between Synergie and I Tennis Foundation is a perfect match. As our payoff says: Synergie, work is our job. Sport is our passion.”
Three key themes were explored during the discussion, all shared by both the tennis world and the business world.
The first was team management, which has become essential even for young athletes, as highlighted by Gipo Arbino: “We understood long ago how important it is to have a complete team supporting every aspect of the player. Today, even young athletes — like the scholarship students supported by I Tennis Foundation — need coaches, physiotherapists, doctors, trainers and mental coaches.”
The second theme was leadership, presented by Ivan Ljubicic through his experience coaching Roger Federer for seven years: “Coaching a great player means not only teaching, but also learning. I believe I learned more from him than he learned from me. You grow together through this exchange.”
The evening then focused on the young athletes of the Little Tennis Champions 2025–2026 programme.
All twelve scholarship recipients were introduced one by one, sharing their journey with the audience. Anesa Ismajili spoke about how rare such an opportunity is in Kosovo due to the lack of tennis structures, while Paolo Toscano stressed the importance of the group, the chance to train with top coaches, and the experience of competing in Tennis Europe tournaments.
The final part of the event addressed error management, a crucial topic both in sport and in business. Simone Bongiovanni presented the “Loher’s Four Steps” model, an approach that helps athletes — and professionals — regain physical and mental balance in key moments.
Thanks to the partnership with Synergie, the event highlighted the strong connection between sport and the corporate world, showing once again how tennis can become an effective tool for team building and shared training. It confirmed the strength of a growing synergy: the one between companies’ strategic themes and the extraordinary impact that Italian tennis is experiencing, with the common goal of growing together.
