Imagine: You’ve just won the U.S. Open. You’re sitting next to your close friend of more than 20 years—whom you just defeated for the title—waiting for the trophy ceremony to begin. It’s the best, most exhilarating moment of your entire career—nay, your entire life.
What will you do next? Pop bottles in the middle of Arthur Ashe Stadium? Crush some karaoke with Serena Williams, whose run at the Open ended the previous day, and Drake?
If you’re Flavia Pennetta, you retire.
As The New York Times tells it, right before the trophy ceremony began, Pennetta leaned over to her close friend (and recently defeated opponent) Roberta Vinci and whispered that she was about to retire. “What?” Vinci exclaimed, totally stunned that her pal would step down at the apex of her career. But then, Vinci realized it made perfect sense. “Va bene,” Vinci said she told Pennetta. “It’s perfect. Go, go.”
In her subsequent victory speech, Pennetta thanked Vinci and her fans, then said, to the crowd’s utter astonishment, “This is my last match at the U.S. Open, and I couldn’t think of a better way.”
Pennetta’s move was especially baffling considering the U.S. Open marked her first major title in singles. But the 33-year-old—whose victory made her the oldest woman to win a debut major championship in the modern era—ultimately decided to put down her racket because she was “losing her competitive fire,” and without it, “it would not be worthwhile to continue playing.”
“This was the perfect moment, I think,” Pennetta said. “Was a really hard decision to make, but I’m really happy that I did it. I’m really happy and proud of myself.”
The decision was particularly poignant because of Pennetta and Vinci’s history: the two first played each other when they were 10 and 9 years old, and later packed up and moved to Rome to enroll in the Italian Tennis Federation’s development program. They lived together for four years—Pennetta told the Times Vinci was a “perfect” roommate—and have since have played together in doubles and on the Italian Fed Cup team, remaining “as close as any two players on tour.”
It’s appropriate, then, that Vinci and Pennetta’s final pairing marked the first major singles final to feature two Italians in the Open era, a match so significant that Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi flew in just to watch it live.
“It’s a great experience for Italian sport,” Renzi said. “But particularly in this moment, the experience of Roberta and Flavia is the experience of great women who continue with pride, with strong approach, not only for tennis but for the life. Two girls from the south of Italy give a great message to every Italian.”
But the message behind Pennetta’s choice isn’t just resonant for Italians. “Sometimes we are scared to take the decision because we don’t know what we like or what we are going to do after, how life is going to be,” she said when asked what she’d do post tennis. “But I think it’s going to be a pretty good life.”
