Flavia Pennetta, born in Brindisi on February 25, 1982, is considered one of the strongest Italian tennis players of all time, and she was the winner of the US Open 2015, the second Italian ever, after Francesca Schiavone, to win a Grand Slam tournament. She did it by beating countrywoman Roberta Vinci in the final and becoming, at 33, the oldest tennis player to win the first Grand Slam of her career.

During her career she has won eleven singles WTA tournaments (including the prestigious Indian Wells tournament) and she is also the Italian tennis player to have accumulated the highest prize money in her career, with a total earning of over $ 14,000,000.

She was number 6 in the world in September 2015, shortly after her triumph in New York; previously she had also been the first Italian tennis player to enter the top ten of the WTA world rankings on August 17, 2009, winning the Palermo tournament, the Los Angeles Premier and reaching the semifinal in Cincinnati, thus putting together a positive series of fifteen consecutive victories (record for an Italian tennis player).

In addition to singles, she also achieved excellent results in doubles, a specialty in which she was the first Italian ever to have reached the No. 1 position in the world in February 2011, winning a total of seventeen WTA tournaments including one Grand Slam tournament ( Australian Open 2011) and the 2010 WTA Tour Championships in Doha, both partnering Argentina's Gisela Dulko. She is the only Italian tennis player to have won a Grand Slam tournament in both singles and doubles.

She is the wife of Fabio Fognini.