With an expanded field of 48 countries in action at the World Cup, interest among tennis players will be at an all-time high\u2026 with the possible exception of Italian players after the 2006 champion nation failed to qualify.<\/p>\n
Casper Ruud, who will be cheering on Norway and striker Erling Haaland in his World Cup debut, couldn\u2019t help but take a friendly dig at Sinner after falling to the World No. 1 in the Rome final.<\/p>\n
“Italy is doing very well in tennis, but in football it’s another story,” Ruud joked during the trophy ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Separately, Sinner was asked if he would trade one of his titles if it meant Italy qualified for this year\u2019s World Cup. \u201cI’d like to make this exchange because it’s a simple thing,” Sinner said. “Many young people and kids haven’t seen the World Cup yet, especially with Italy not being there.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The World Cup began June 11 and culminates July 19 at East Rutherford, New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With an expanded field of 48 countries in action at the World Cup, interest among tennis players will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-734667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}