Do we like them?

Do we like Jasmine Paolini?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean, kind record with real good in it, but she keeps her politics to herself, so there's not much on the page to push the score higher.

Jasmine Paolini is the Tuscan kid who became one of the great Italian sporting stories of the decade. She was born in 1996 to an Italian father and a mother with Polish, Danish and Ghanaian roots, and has said her mum spoke Polish to her when she was young.

The rise was late and loud. She won her first WTA title in 2021, then took the big Dubai title in 2024 and cracked the top 10 that year. She made the Roland Garros and Wimbledon finals in the same year, which is a hell of a way to arrive at 28.

The gold medal came with her doubles partner Sara Errani at the Paris 2024 Olympics, the first Olympic tennis gold in Italy's history according to reports. It's a lovely story for a player who spent years being the underdog.

On the harm test, we found nothing. We searched for anything she'd said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, health or the climate and found no statements either way. We found no dodgy causes, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no questionable company. That's an absence of evidence rather than a campaign for anything, so the score reflects it.

What we did find was decency. When a former player called Coco Gauff boring, Paolini defended the younger player and said she only brings positive things to tennis. At the 2025 French Open, two fans scrapped over a towel she'd tossed into the stands. She stepped in, took it back and passed it to someone else.

Off court, she won the BJK Cup Finals Heart Award in December 2024 and gave the 10,000 dollar prize to Make a Wish Italia. She also sticks up for her peers on the schedule: in May 2026 she argued that WTA 1000 events should be a mix of one-week and two-week formats.