Andreas Seppi: It's Better to be in Colorado than in Italy Right Now

ATP tennis player Andreas Seppi is currently spending the tennis shutdown in Colorado with his wife and their new born child who was born in February.

Speaking about his first time experience of being a father, Seppi says, "It’s a really new experience and of course very interesting. In the end, it was nice to be with my wife and my baby girl the whole time to see how she’s been evolving and getting bigger. Now she’s starting to laugh and she’s a little more into things, so it’s very nice. The first weeks you can’t do a lot because she needs to sleep and to eat and that’s it. It’s not that you could do much as a father, I would say. I think the most interesting thing to see is in two months, she got a lot bigger and she’s started to laugh a little bit. You talk to her and she looks at you now, so you feel like she’s getting more interested in what’s going on around her.”

Seppi says he is lucky to be in Colorado as they are able to go out a little bit and for a hike in their property as compared to the total shutdown in Italy. "We’re in a perfect place, we love it here. It’s almost better to be here than in Italy because at least we can go out and go for a hike on our property. We have a lot of outdoor space, so I think it’s almost better to be here right now. [In Italy] you can’t really do anything. You have to stay in the house. If you don’t have a garden or something there you are stuck in the apartment all the time. We have no neighbours around, we are pretty isolated, so in this kind of situation I think it’s for sure very good.”

Seppi, who turned 36 years old on February, says he is keeping fit by shovelling snow and working out at home during the shutdown but does not want to overdo it since he does not know how long the shutdown would last. "We have a lot of snow. The past couple days it was snowing nonstop. I haven’t seen this much snow in a while. I heard that Boulder is the city with the most snow in the United States this year. Snow shovelling, it’s happening almost every week now, and that keeps me in shape for sure. It’s good strength exercise. I can work out at home, I go for runs sometimes. You also can’t work out like crazy like in the off-season because you don’t know how long this is going to last. You can’t practise fully for months, especially at my age. If I was 20 years old, that would be different."

Seppi is a former Top 20 player with 3 ATP singles and 1 ATP doubles title. He has also earned over $10 million in career prize money.

He has reached the fourth round of the Australian Open on four occasions (2013, 2015, 2017, 2018) as well as the fourth round of the French Open and Wimbledon once each.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3bm6sLm