Hamad Mededovic.
| Photo Credit: R. RAGU
The first impression of 19-year-old Hamad Međedović playing tennis is that of a promising talent with some powerful weapons in his armoury.
Powerful serve
He has a powerful serve and solid ground strokes and, like his famous Serbian compatriot Novak Djokovic, can quickly shift from defence to offence, especially on his backhand side.
It should not be surprising that Djokovic hand-picked him and has been guiding the youngster for the last couple of years and is billed as the next big player from Serbia.
In 2022, he moved from 669 in the rankings to a career-high of 248 and is currently ranked 261.
On Tuesday, he went past Leo Borg, son of the legendary Bjorn Borg, in three sets 6-1, 4-6, 6-2.
It was a match in which he dominated for the first set-and-a-half before going off the boil for a while after a couple of close calls went against him. From being a break up in the second set at 4-3, he lost his next two service games to surrender the set 6-4 with a few double faults.
Course correction
He quickly course-corrected and breezed past the Swede to progress to the next round.
After the match, Mededovic, who trains at Novak Tennis Centre in Belgrade, conceded that he had taken the game into a third set needlessly and should have sealed it earlier.
On his relationship with the current world number one in men’s tennis, who has also helped the youngster monetarily, Međedović said, “Novak has helped me a lot through my career. We met a couple of years ago helped me in every possible way in my career, and he’s there for me.”
“He is the most disciplined guy I have ever met, and I learnt a lot. The guy is doing absolutely everything that he can for his career.
“His entire day is about tennis, you know, not just practising, but doing all the stuff to get better on the court, from sleeping to his diet,” said Mededovic. explained what he learnt from working with his idol.
When asked if he was nervous with Bjorn sitting on the sidelines watching his son, the Serbian said, “Not really. I got used to some (big) players watching me, especially Novak. I had the biggest problem when he was seeing me. It was a surreal experience when I first went to train with him. After that, everything becomes easy.”
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