WATCH: Vinci plays sumo tennis, guesses grunters on TV

Roberta Vinci went on Italy's Sky Uno entertainment channel recently. She sat down to chat, and then collided on a tennis court of sorts with host Alessandro Cattelan, who is also the host of her country's “X Factor” program. In tried and true (read: clichéd) talk-show fashion, the host put his guest to the test of guessing various grunts' originators. This time the question in play was this: Tennis or pornography?

Vinci got one grunt wrong, that of Maria Sharapova, which she thought was a porn sound. But Vinci then exacted her pseudo-revenge, taking Cattelan to task in a game of sumo-suit tennis.

The Italian turns 33 on Thursday. Her career has certainly shifted since she beat Serena Williams in an intense, theatrical 2015 U.S. Open semifinal that, as we know, stopped the WTA No. 1's quest for the calendar-year Grand Slam. Vinci recently dished on life since Serena—and what it’s like encountering Serena. She also termed the WTA locker room a "circus."

Therein lies the beauty, or one of the beauties, of Roberta: She simply speaks her mind. She's past the point of fretting about a legacy or what others think of her. That's living.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.