ROME (AP) — Top-ranked Jannik Sinner is dominating men’s tennis and Italy swept both the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup team titles last year.
Jasmine Paolini just became the first home player to win the Italian Open in 40 years and is about to move up to No. 4 in the women’s rankings.
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Italy's Jannik Sinner celebrates a winning point during a round of sixteen match against Argentina's Francisco Cerundolo at the Italian Open tennis tournament in Rome, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Italy's Jannik Sinner, left, shares a light moment with Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of their meeting at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Vatican Media via AP)
Jasmine Paolini, of Italy, reacts to defeating Coco Gauff, of the United States, at the end of their Italian Open tennis match final, at the Foro Italico in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
People watch a training session between Italy's Lorenzo Sonego, serving bottom, and Italy's Jannik Sinner at the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy, May 6, 2025 (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)
Italy's Jannik Sinner, left, plays Norway's Casper Ruud during their quarterfinal tennis match at the Italian Open, at the Foro Italico, in Rome, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Players like Lorenzo Musetti, Federico Cinà and Tyra Caterina Grant provide the potential for Italy to dominate tennis for years to come.
Still, Italian Tennis and Padel Federation president Angelo Binaghi wants more. Much more.
Binaghi has the grandiose aim to make the Italian Open a fifth Grand Slam tournament alongside the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open — upending a century of tennis history.
“In what other part of society is there a monopoly that lasts for more than 100 years?” Binaghi said Sunday, the final day of the Italian Open. “Why are there always four and always the same four? … It's absolutely unfair and doesn’t help tennis grow.”
The Italian Open is a Masters Series event that is one rung below the Slams in the hierarchy of tennis tournaments. But the event at the Foro Italico now runs for two weeks like the majors and is booming thanks to the successes of Sinner, Paolini and many other Italian players.
Italy has also hosted the ATP Finals in Turin since 2021 and recently extended its hosting contract for the year-ending tournament featuring the top eight men's players through 2030. Also, the Davis Cup Final 8 will begin a three-year run in Italy this November, starting in Bologna.
“We’re now the world champion both on the court and at the organizational level,” Binaghi said.
Earlier this year, Binaghi expressed interest in acquiring the license for the Madrid Open, which immediately precedes Rome in the tennis calendar. The idea was that eliminating Madrid and making Rome bigger could constitute a fifth Slam.
“We need to be attentive on the international market and try to take advantage of every opportunity that arises, from the smallest ATP 250 all the way up to the biggest tournaments,” Binaghi said.
Tournaments in Indian Wells, California, and Miami have also been mentioned as possible fifth Slams.
“I mean, it would be great for me, because I’m trying to win one,” said Alexander Zverev, a two-time Rome champion, when asked about the possibility earlier this year. “Is it possible to make one? Yeah, for sure. … Is it going to be seen as a Grand Slam by everyone — by the media, by the players? I don’t know.”
Added former Wimbledon and U.S. Open finalist Ons Jabeur, “We need to improve the structure we have right now more than to have a fifth Grand Slam. I feel like we can do much better things with the four Grand Slams we have and do better for players, for media, and for everyone else around it.”
A request for comment sent to the Grand Slam board, which represents the four majors, was not immediately answered.
After years of delays, organizers announced new plans to build a retractable roof over the Italian Open’s main stadium, Campo Centrale.
At a cost of 60 million euros ($67 million), the roof is slated to be ready for the 2028 tournament and will also result in 2,000 extra seats being added — increasing the capacity to 12,500.
For this year’s tournament, the event grounds at the Foro Italico were increased from 12 to 20 hectares (30 to 50 acres) and another statue-lined competition arena was added.
The Stadio dei Marmi hosted three courts: a 3,000-seat arena and two courts each featuring seating for 800.
The 3,000-seat arena became the tournament’s third-largest show court after Campo Centrale and the Grand Stand Arena, making the Pietrangeli court — which also features an array of statues — the fourth largest.
AP Tennis Writer Howard Fendrich in Miami Gardens, Florida, contributed to this report.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Italy's Jannik Sinner celebrates a winning point during a round of sixteen match against Argentina's Francisco Cerundolo at the Italian Open tennis tournament in Rome, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Italy's Jannik Sinner, left, shares a light moment with Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of their meeting at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Vatican Media via AP)
Jasmine Paolini, of Italy, reacts to defeating Coco Gauff, of the United States, at the end of their Italian Open tennis match final, at the Foro Italico in Rome, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
People watch a training session between Italy's Lorenzo Sonego, serving bottom, and Italy's Jannik Sinner at the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy, May 6, 2025 (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)
Italy's Jannik Sinner, left, plays Norway's Casper Ruud during their quarterfinal tennis match at the Italian Open, at the Foro Italico, in Rome, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
