Andreas Seppi and his wife Michela Bernardi became parents of Liv Seppi Bernardi on 20th February. The Italian tennis veteran talked about fatherhood at the time of coronavirus pandemic during his interview to ATP Tour.com.
Seppi and his family is currently staying at home with his family in Colorado during the lockdown. Seppi’s wife moved to Colorado to earn a Masters’ degree. Andreas and Michela bought a house in Boulder.
“Liv is just two months old, so you would not go for a bycicle ride or skiing. For her it doesn’t make a big difference. She is pretty quiet. She is not crying a lot and she is sleeping six, seven hours in a row, which makes it pretty easy. On that side, we are pretty lucky”, said Seppi.
Seppi said that life is better in Colorado than in Italy, where 22747 people have died due to Covid-19.
“Colorado is a perfect place. We love it here. It’s almost better to be here than in Italy because at least we can go for a hike on our property. We have a lot of outdoor space. 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. I think it’s bad everywhere. I think Italy got hit really bad at the beginning, so all the focus was on Italy. Now other places are in a worse position, so it’s tough to see for the country and the problem is that nobody is going to last and when we will be back to normal routines. That’s the most scary thing. If they say in one month everything is going to be over, it would be great, but every week they are going to prolong the quarantine”.
Seppi reached the second round at Auckland and at the Australian Open (losing against Stan Wawrinka in five sets) at the start of the year. Before the tour break Seppi advanced to the tenth ATP Tour final of his career in New York losing to Kyle Edmund. In the first round of the US tournament he beat Damir Dzumhur in the first round after saving one match point.
In 2019 he finished in the top 100 for the 15th straight year. He beat Stefanos Tsitsipas and Diego Schwartzman in Sydney to reach the first ATP Tour final since 2015. The Italian player is trying to keep fit at home to be ready when the season will resume.
“I can work at home. I go for runs sometimes. You can’t work out like crazy like in the off-season because you don’t know how it 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”.
