Sunday morning I left for the second tournament that I will play after my comeback, which is held in Valencia, and I took advantage of the free time – in the airport and on the train journey – to catch up on the tennis news.
In the meantime, I arrived and already checked two first round wins (both in Singles & Doubles) [the selfie is taken towards the end of the trip, when sleep already started to take the initiative].
One tweet in particular caught my attention, that related to Hamad Medjedovic, the young Serbian player – he turned 20 on July 18 – who won “Next Gen ATP Finals”.
The first 5 champions of the tournament for the highest ranked players under 21 years were Hyeon Chung, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Brandon Nakashima, but Hamad Medjedovic is the lowest ranked among them. Now he is ranked 113, but he reached his CHR – 102 ATP – on October 16, this year.
He dominated the last main circuit tournament of 2023 with 5 wins from as many matches played. In the final, he defeated the 1st seed, Frenchman Arthur Fils (36 ATP), in 5 sets, after missing the first two match points in the 4th [videoclips with match summaries and the best points of the tournament, at the end of the article].
Hamad ends the season of his full affirmation on the circuit in the best possible way: in 2023 he won 3 ATP Challenger titles, made his Davis Cup debut with a win, at ATP 250 Gstaad he won the first three matches of his career on the main draw of the main circuit, for semi-finals. In September he repeated the result at ATP 250 Astana. He qualified for the main draws of Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
Thus, this year, both ATP year end tournaments were won by Serbians, the first time that players from the same country accomplish this.
After this introduction meant to get ourselves up to date with the still less known Hamad, we reached the heart of the matter.
In 2021, Novak Djokovic offered to cover all costs related to the professional career of his young compatriot. But he also helped him in other ways, for example by training with him:
Eldin, Hamad‘s father told the story of this fruitful relationship’s beginnings in an interview for the important Bulgarian website Sportal (one million views daily) [via @Olly_Tennis_]:
I remember the second conversation I had with Novak ever, we spoke about specific steps in Hamad’s career. Novak was presenting me with ideas, what to do with Hamad’s game, and I remember telling him:
“Nole, I am sorry, but the things you are talking about cost a lot of money!’ And he just keeps going about coaches, what are we going to do and how, and then says:
“All Hamad needs to do is to work hard, I will take care of the rest.”
I told him again: ‘Nole, it costs a lot.’ At that point, Novak told me:
“Edo, I am not doing this for the money! I make my money elsewhere, my role here is to help. What kind of man would I be if I would not help the kids that deserve it, that love tennis and – on top of that – achieve good results?’ I just stand there and he adds: ‘You know what we are going to do? One day, when Hamad makes it, you are going to take someone under your wings and help in the same way.”
Hamad‘s father’s story is so meaningful that there is no need for further comments.
Let’s just note that Djokovic supports players in his own name – Medjedovic is not the only one – in the same manner he wants to do it through PTPA, for the entire tour.
And we remain hopeful that, in the near future, we will witness a similar beautiful story in our country, so that at least a few players will no longer go through the same financial struggle at the start of their professional career or even later.
So I’m rushing for another practice session (on Wednesday I’m not scheduled). We’ll meet again here after the tournament.
