Italy enthralled by starry finalists

Italy should build a Mount Rushmore-like monument for US Open finalists Flavia Pennetta and Roberta Vinci.

That was the suggestion on Sunday from the Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy's leading sports newspaper.

Under a front-page headline of "We're the champions" that also referred to Fabio Aru's exploits in the Spanish Vuelta cycling race, a Gazzetta editorial said:

"What we should build for Flavia and Roberta, the little but great tennis players for whom the world now envies us, is a monument with multiple faces - but in place of American presidents we should honor the Azzurri from this week."

Pennetta's victory over Vinci in the first all-Italian Grand Slam final on Saturday continued to top the headlines in Italy.

A member of the regional government in Puglia, the southern region where both players come from, suggested Pennetta and Vinci be named world ambassadors for the area.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi canceled his appointments and flew to New York to attend the final, sparking a wave of controversy back home.

Opposition lawmakers deemed the trip on a government jet a waste of money and said Renzi should have been addressing the country's problems instead.

"If it was football nobody would have said anything," Renzi said in a newsletter. "But it's tennis - women's tennis - and therefore a lot of people looked down upon it as a lesser sport."

Associated Press