Adriano Panatta was born in Rome on July 9, 1950. Among the best Italian tennis players ever, he won 10 singles tournaments out of 26 finals played, as well as 18 doubles titles out of 29 finals.

In 1976 he triumphed in singles at the Internazionali d'Italia and at the Roland Garros, the only Italian tennis player to have hit the pairing in the same season and, in the Open era, to have won a Grand Slam test. In the same year he also contributed to the only historic victory of the Davis Cup by the Italian national team. He was number 4 in the world in August 1976, the best singles ATP ranking ever achieved by an Italian tennis player since the introduction of the computerized calculation system, and was number 1 in Italy for a total of 284 weeks.

He is the only Italian tennis player to have won two titles in the category equivalent to the current ATP Masters 1000 in singles, in 1975 he became the first Italian to have qualified for an edition of the men's singles finals of the Masters.

He was the only player in the world able to defeat six-time tournament champion Björn Borg at the Roland Garros.

In 1980, together with Paolo Bertolucci, he won the doubles tournament in Monte Carlo, the only title won in the Open era by an Italian couple in the Principality tournament.