‘Chasing Dreams Together.’ More than a motto, it is the idea around which every exchange revolves. Knowledge and experience. Emotions and responsibility. Forehands and backhands. Day after day, they circulate across the courts overlooking the Riviera dei Fiori, where the rhythm of training merges almost imperceptibly with that of the sea itself. This is Sanremo.

From the first session of the morning to the last rally of the evening, different generations, different ambitions and different trajectories inhabit the same courts. Every stroke carries its own cadence, yet together they compose a single sound: that of the future taking shape. It is the future of players whose games, and whose characters, are still being formed, on court as much as beyond it. Alongside them stand those who have already experienced professional tennis in all its complexity and have chosen to place that experience at the service of the next generation. One dream looks ahead to the ATP rankings. The other has already lived them, and now finds its fulfilment in helping others pursue them.

There is something quietly extraordinary about a place like this. A place where sporting development is inseparable from personal growth. Where discipline is never detached from enjoyment, and where education is grounded not in theory, but in experience lived day after day. It is this philosophy that emerges through the words of Matteo Civarolo and Gianluca Mager, co-founders of the Sanremo Tennis Team: one of Italy’s foremost centres of tennis development, and an increasingly significant presence on the international stage. Together with Altavia Court, we came to understand what truly lies behind the idea of chasing dreams together.

How, and how deeply, did tennis become part of your life? What made you fall irrevocably in love with the sport?

Matteo Civarolo: “I started playing tennis when I was four and a half, thanks to my father. I still remember a free trial session at the club in Asti, the town where I was born. It was almost love at first sight. After that first session, I enrolled straight away. From there, everything kept building. First came the regional circuit, then the national one, and eventually the international stage. Most of my greatest satisfactions came as a junior, including the opportunity to compete in the Junior Grand Slams. My professional career, on the other hand, lasted only a couple of years because I decided to go to university. I reached a career-high ranking of around No. 850 in the ATP before turning my attention to my studies, and eventually to coaching. The transition from player to coach felt completely natural. I enjoyed it from the very beginning.”

Gianluca Mager: “I started playing tennis when I was five or six. My father had always been passionate about sport. We lived just a few hundred metres from the local club, where he spent a lot of his time, and he was the one who introduced me to my first coaches. They immediately noticed that I struck the ball well and told my father I had something special. That’s where it all began. The results came quickly. By the time I was twelve I was already one of the strongest players in my age group, competing in prestigious events such as the Nations Challenge. Then adolescence arrived, and with it a more complicated period. I was a little rebellious. Friends, cafés, my first nights out… they all seemed more important than tennis. Still, tennis never really left me, largely thanks to my father. He kept encouraging me to play tournaments, to enter Open events, to stay connected to that world. Then an opportunity came with the Serie A1 team in Genoa. They were looking for a young player who could help them compete for the title. That was the moment I realised I had to stop wasting energy on distractions and commit myself fully to tennis. Everything changed. Buses, trains, practice sessions, eight-hour training days entirely devoted to becoming a better player. I made significant sacrifices, but for the first time I also felt myself maturing, because I finally had a clear purpose. A few months after making that change, in 2013, I earned my first ATP points. Looking back, that was the real beginning.”

What has tennis represented throughout your life, and what does it represent to you today?

Matteo Civarolo: “For me, tennis has always been about passion. At the level I was competing, sacrifices were inevitable, of course, but I never really experienced them as sacrifices. My relationship with tennis was always rooted in love, and because of that everything came naturally. I loved training, travelling, competing, seeing the world. I still love all of it today, even if I experience it from a different perspective, as a coach.”

Gianluca Mager: “Tennis has been everything to me. From national tournaments to the Challenger Tour, from ATP events to the Grand Slams. The highest point came in Rio de Janeiro, when I reached my first ATP final, broke into the Top 100, and earned my first call-up to the Davis Cup team. Life as a tennis player is extraordinary. You travel, you experience emotions that are difficult to describe. But until you reach a certain level, it’s also a daily struggle: difficult conditions, constant pressure, results you have to keep chasing. Then, just as I’d finally reached the place I’d been working towards for years, the pandemic arrived. One moment I was playing an ATP final; the next I was representing Italy in an empty Davis Cup stadium, before tournaments started disappearing from the calendar altogether and I found myself confined at home for months. What people often don’t realise is that it takes years for an athlete, especially a tennis player, to build the kind of confidence that allows you to ride the right wave. I’d finally reached that point. I trusted my game, I could enter every tournament I wanted, and then everything stopped. That interruption forced me to process everything I’d achieved, and in a strange way it slowly wore me down. For two years my life revolved around Covid tests, restrictions and complicated travel. There were days when I felt more anxious about testing positive than about stepping onto the court. Matches themselves no longer gave me the same balance of tension and enjoyment they once had. Then my daughter was born, and the constant travelling and training became increasingly difficult. The truth is, I’ve never enjoyed being away from home. I did it only because tennis was, quite simply, the most important thing in my life. I stopped, I came back, I tried again. There were plenty of highs and lows. Eventually, my wife told me I needed to stop because that way of living was no longer sustainable. Every time I had to leave for a tournament, I felt miserable. I’d withdraw into myself. That’s when I truly began thinking about what came next. Coaching young players was the first idea that came to mind. I’d always been drawn to it: I simply needed time to recognise that it was exactly where I belonged.”

What led you to become a coach? And what philosophy guides the way you approach this role?

Matteo Civarolo: “When I finished university, I wasn’t sure whether to keep playing or start working straight away. I was fortunate enough that my father was running Tennis Sanremo, where I still work today and where our training centre is based. I started from the ground up, coaching mini tennis. That was an important step because it eventually led me to working with competitive players, then with Gianluca himself, we shared a remarkable journey together, and later with Matteo Arnaldi, a partnership that continues to this day. I coached Gianluca from 2017 until the end of his professional career. Our relationship goes back a long way, and the philosophy that shapes the way we work has developed naturally over time. Beyond tennis, beyond whether someone becomes a champion or not, what truly matters to us is that every player takes something meaningful away from their time with us. We want them to grow, both as athletes and as people.”

Gianluca Mager: “It felt like a natural transition, although not an immediate one. After I stopped playing, I was torn. One day I’d think about coming back, the next I’d convince myself it was over. Deep down, though, I knew the fire wasn’t there anymore. I no longer had that urge to throw everything I had at it. During a qualifying match I realised, once and for all, that my career had come to an end. It wasn’t because I was struggling physically. I simply understood that forcing myself to continue would have meant doing myself a disservice. Then a young player arrived in Sanremo. At first we just hit together a few times, but eventually he moved there with his family and started training under my guidance. That’s when I realised how much I genuinely enjoyed working with young players. It wasn’t something I had planned. It simply came naturally. Maybe because my own adolescence wasn’t exactly straightforward, I find it easy to relate to the young people in front of me. For me, it’s never been only about producing champions. It’s about helping them grow, teaching them something that goes beyond tennis: something about life, about values, about the way they carry themselves.”

What do you hope to pass on to the young players you have the opportunity to shape?

Matteo Civarolo: “The first thing is discipline. In tennis, if you want to improve, there’s simply no way around it. From morning to night, every aspect of your life as a player deserves attention, both on and off the court. Then comes commitment. And there’s something else that, unfortunately, is often overlooked today: enjoyment. Everything begins there. If a young player doesn’t enjoy being on court, it’s impossible to expect real progress. There has to be balance. Discipline and enjoyment should never exist separately. Even at the highest level, tennis is still a game. And very often, it’s not the young players who create the problem. Sometimes it’s the parents, who place too much pressure on them far too early. The risk is that, eventually, the child simply stops wanting to play.”

Gianluca Mager: “For Matteo and me, everything starts from the same principle: there has to be dialogue. You need to build a relationship where a player feels comfortable talking to you, and where you’re able to speak openly with them, while always respecting the boundaries between coach and athlete. It can’t feel like a military academy. You have to know the person in front of you. You have to understand how they’re feeling and be willing to listen. If one day they’re tired or going through a difficult moment, you need to recognise that. At the same time, commitment can never be negotiable. If all you have to give on a particular day is eighty per cent, then give one hundred per cent of that eighty. Parents entrust you with their children. That’s an enormous responsibility. Inevitably, though, you also grow attached to them. You worry about them. I’m a father myself, and in many ways I watch the boys and girls I coach grow up before my eyes. I remember very clearly what I was like at their age, and that helps me understand what they may need from the person standing on the other side of the net. Ultimately, what matters most is that they’re happy, and that they learn what it truly means to give everything they have.”

Tennis is built on technique and refined talent, but above all on mental and emotional balance. How did you experience that dimension as a player? And how do you try to cultivate it in the athletes you coach today?

Matteo Civarolo: “That’s a fundamental question because mental balance isn’t simply part of being a tennis player: it is the essence of it. It’s incredibly difficult to find, and perhaps even harder to maintain. Today it’s become even more challenging because of social media. I think of Matteo Arnaldi. There have been periods when he played very little and was heavily criticised. He’s someone who manages to protect himself from outside judgement, but not everyone can do that. The danger is falling into a negative mental cycle that eventually extends far beyond tennis. Some athletes have the personality to withstand it. Others struggle much more. It’s never been a more relevant issue than it is today. That’s why we devote so much attention to it, creating an individual mental pathway for every athlete we work with. That said, there is a limit. As coaches, we can do a great deal, but not everything is within our control.”

Gianluca Mager: “Many of the players we work with also have a dedicated mental performance coach. It’s a collaborative process that involves everyone around the athlete. As coaches, Matteo and I speak constantly. From the very beginning, we agreed that the mental and emotional side of the game would come before everything else. The players we work with should never become numbers. We never wanted a system where someone walks in, delivers results, and that’s the end of the relationship. Our idea has always been to work with a small group of athletes and truly invest ourselves in each of them. We want them to feel that they’re part of something: almost part of a family. We want them to see their coaches as genuine points of reference. Regardless of ranking or level, everyone here is treated with the same respect. Every player should know they can speak openly, that they’ll be listened to, and that they never have to face difficulties alone.”

How do you cultivate what might be considered tennis’s holy grail: confidence?

Matteo Civarolo: “I’ve seen incredibly talented players, technically outstanding, fall short of their potential simply because they lacked belief in themselves, or because they didn’t possess that relentless determination to make it at all costs. Talent matters. Technique matters too. But once you reach a certain level, what happens on court is only part of the equation. Of course you need to play well. Otherwise, you simply don’t get there. But we’ve all seen technically gifted players achieve very little, while others, perhaps with fewer natural gifts, break into the Top 100 and beyond. That tells you just how important confidence is. Your mindset. Your determination. For some players, those qualities come naturally. For others, confidence has to be built. And building it is exactly what we were talking about before: it’s a process that involves every aspect of the athlete.”

Gianluca Mager: “Confidence is the key to everything: not only for individual athletes, but for teams as well. When you’re truly confident, you become capable of achieving things you never thought possible. That’s exactly what happened to me. When things begin to click, everything accelerates. It happens so quickly that you barely realise it’s happening. The role of a coach is to create the conditions that allow an athlete to reach that state, while also teaching them how to look for it again, and how to preserve it, during the difficult periods, when everything feels far less certain. That’s the philosophy Matteo and I have built our work around. Our own experiences help us pass on a healthy understanding of confidence to the young players we coach.”

The Sanremo Tennis Team’s motto is Chasing Dreams Together. What does it mean to pursue dreams alongside young athletes, especially during such a remarkable era for Italian tennis?

Matteo Civarolo: “Most of the players we work with are between twelve and eighteen years old. It’s an age when you can shape not only their technique, but also the way they carry themselves on court. We’re fortunate to be living through an extraordinary moment for Italian tennis. I believe the sport is only going to keep growing over the next few years, and that’s an incredibly positive starting point for all of us. Our responsibility is to create an environment where young players are educated in discipline just as much as they are encouraged to enjoy what they do. A place where they can arrive in the morning, spend the entire day on court, and leave genuinely happy they were there. Without that desire, without that genuine enjoyment, it’s incredibly difficult to train every day, to travel constantly, to compete week after week, especially when you’re still young. To me, that’s what the dream really is: sharing a process that connects new generations with this sport in the healthiest and most meaningful way we know.”

Gianluca Mager: “Working with young players brings back many of the emotions you experience as an athlete yourself. You feel something inside that’s difficult to describe. Only someone who’s lived through competitive sport, at any level, really understands what I mean. I recently travelled to Austria with three of our players for a tournament. The results weren’t extraordinary, but I couldn’t have been prouder of them: for the way they behaved, the attitude they showed, the way they fought for every point. When they listen to you, when they genuinely try to apply what you’ve taught them and keep working until they finally succeed… those are the moments that make this profession so rewarding.”

We often reflect on the relationship between art and sport, and tennis is undoubtedly a discipline with a deeply artistic dimension. As a player, did you ever feel like an artist? And now, as a coach, when you’re refining movements, gestures and technique, do you ever feel that you’re shaping artists in their own right?

Matteo Civarolo: “As a player, honestly, no. When you’re competing, you’re thinking about improving. You know what you need to work on, you have a clear idea of your game, but you don’t really think in those terms. As a coach, though, I do. There’s something incredibly rewarding about taking a young player from one starting point and watching them evolve month after month. We like filming our players so we can compare those videos over time and see how they’ve progressed. Whenever we notice positive changes in their movements, and in the effectiveness of those movements, it’s always immensely satisfying.”

Gianluca Mager: “I’d honestly never thought about it that way. But it’s an interesting perspective. When you’re correcting a forehand, a backhand or any movement on court, you’re also working with form, with detail. It’s a very fitting metaphor.”

Your training base overlooks the Ligurian Riviera and, from time to time, your sessions even extend onto the beaches of Sanremo. What does it mean to experience tennis in such close dialogue with a place like this?

Matteo Civarolo: “As I mentioned, I’m originally from Asti. I moved to Sanremo later, after my father took over the club in 2010, so we’ve now been rooted here for more than fifteen years. This whole area—Sanremo, Bordighera, Nice and the Côte d’Azur—is a remarkable place for tennis. Some of the world’s most prestigious academies are based here, including those of Riccardo Piatti, Patrick Mouratoglou and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. That alone tells you how much the climate and the surrounding environment favour year-round training. We practise outdoors almost all year. During the winter we cover one court, but generally speaking, the weather allows us to stay outside virtually every day of the year.”

Gianluca Mager: “From a tennis perspective, Sanremo is the envy of the entire country. We’re just half an hour from Monaco, in an area where tennis has always had a strong presence and where many outstanding training centres have emerged in recent years. The climate is exceptional, and the city’s location couldn’t be better. Without question, it’s an ideal place to train.”

The academy bears both of your names. After your respective careers as players, and after building this project together, what kind of relationship binds you today?

Matteo Civarolo: “Gianluca and I are incredibly close. I was even his best man at his wedding. The years we spent travelling together while I was coaching him only strengthened that bond. Building this project alongside him has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Having someone beside you every day: someone you can exchange ideas with, challenge yourself with, talk through everything with… it pushes you to become better yourself. We continue to grow alongside one another. Gianluca competed at the highest level and brings an enormous amount of experience. As I mentioned earlier, I now travel the world coaching Matteo Arnaldi, which means I’m away from Sanremo a great deal. Gianluca, on the other hand, is much more present at the academy and oversees every aspect of its daily life. Whenever I finish a tournament with Matteo, I come straight back to Sanremo to get back to work alongside him.”

Gianluca Mager: “Ours is a very deep relationship, even if we’re both fairly reserved by nature. We’ve known each other since we were practically children. Matteo arrived here in Sanremo, at the club where I grew up. He coached me, guided me and stood beside me throughout my entire career. He always believed in me as a tennis player. When he realised I had nothing left to give as a professional, I think it hurt him as much as it hurt me. But that was also the moment something new began. Together we’ve built a project that means a great deal to both of us: something we genuinely feel belongs to us.”

What do you feel when you watch the athletes you coach grow—not only as tennis players, but as people?

Matteo Civarolo: “It’s incredibly rewarding. The greatest satisfaction comes when a player returns to the academy, regardless of whether they’ve won or lost, and you can see they’re genuinely happy with what they’re doing and with the path they’re building for themselves. At such a young age, it’s still too early to talk about careers. At that stage, the process matters far more than the destination. If you see them enjoying their training, embracing their own growth, that’s already an enormous source of fulfilment. Without that, there’s no real development: neither as tennis players nor as human beings. For us, both matter equally. We want to help them become better players, but above all, better people.”

Gianluca Mager: “The most beautiful part is watching these young players grow up. They arrive here as little more than children, and over the years you watch them mature. If you’re able to leave them with something that stays—a memory, a lesson, a way of looking at life, something meaningful they’ll carry with them forever—then, to me, there’s no greater reward. Nothing compares to that.”