Potito Starace of Italy lost to Jarkko Nieminen on Monday in an indoor tournament in Zagreb, Croatia.

I'll have to add Starace to my long list of hot professional tennis players.
ESPN Photo Wire

Potito??? eek! Now that is one hell of a strange name.

Filippo Volandri and Daniele Bracciali are a couple of hot Italian players....Italy is slowly becoming a presence on both the ATP and WTA tours.

Does Potito mean a little potato? wink If he plays doubles with Broccioli (wink) it could be a couple nice side dishes...

I thought Starace is the first name for a tennis player- STAR ACE

[ January 31, 2006, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: kick ]

Kick, thank you for the morning burst of laughter. You read my mind about the name. I too, was thinking, just change the "i" to an "a", and there you go! wink

Is it me, or does he look like Alvarez from OZ in that picture?

yes, it's certainly a weird and (thankfully) rather rare name in italy. it's actually the italianised form of Potitus, so i presume he was named after St Potitus, one of the myriad catholic martyrs who, depending on your sources, was either killed on the rack or made mince meat of with a sword.

as for "bracciali", it could loosely be translated as "bracelets" or "armbands".

I prefer the rendering of his name to:

Potato Starch...

Well hey, that's what pops in to my head whenever I read the name. Hadn't seen him before... mmm... thanks for the pic!

Starchy...

Hot Potito just took out Chela at the Copa Telmex tournament in Buenos Aires.

Next battle of the beauties is him vs. Ferrero.

How does this man have a thread unto himself?