Rome-born Claudio Pistolesi, who started playing tennis aged three, is a former player and coach. Pistolesi was crowned the 1985 ITF Junior World Champion, when lifted the Orange Bowl, finished runner-up at the Italian Open and European Championships, and was a semi-finalist at Roland Garros and US Open. He played on the ATP World circuit for more than 10 years, reaching a career-high World No. 71 on 17 August 1987. He had impressive wins during his career defeating World No. 2 Mats Wilander at 1988 Monte Carlo and No. 6-ranked Kent Carlsson at 1989 Nice. In 1996, Claudio started coaching on the professional tour with Japanese player Takao Suzuki and was Monica Seles' practice partner for two years. For the past 13 years, Claudio has coached a large number of players on the ATP World Tour and WTA circuits, including Simone Bolelli, Michael Berrer, George Bastl, Attila Savolt, Davide Sanguinetti, Robin Soderling, Ai Sugiyama, Anna Smashnova and Mara Santangelo. All of them reached their best ranking under Claudio's supervision. Since 1997, he has written monthly columns in Italian magazines, 'Il Tennis Italiano', 'Match Point', 'Tennis Oggi' and daily newspapers like 'L'Unita', 'Il Tempo', 'La Gazzetta Dello Sporte'. He is also a television commentator of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event in Rome for the national TV channel MediaSet.