Kovacevic meeting and playing his idol Djokovic

For Aleksandar Kovacevic, playing Novak Djokovic is a dream come true. He just hoped it would come a little later, and not in the first round of Roland-Garros.

“If you asked me two years ago or earlier, I would have said that’s all I want and that I don’t care if he kills me on the court or not,” Kovacevic told Tennis Majors. “My mentality is different now, I want to do well and I feel I have the level to compete with most guys, so playing Novak Djokovic in the first round is maybe not what I was hoping to see.”

Aleksandar’s father Milan, originally from the Serbian capital Belgrade, moved to the United States to study computer science at UCLA. His mother, Milanka, is from Travnik and is best known for portraying the Serbian Nobel laureate in literature Ivo Andric in her novel. Travnika Chronicle (Consular days).

Both were near-professional table tennis players and met on the junior circuit before creating a life together in the United States.

Manhattan tennis players are rarely seen.

Aleksandar Kovacevic

“We had a ping-pong table in our basement in New York, but I didn’t like it as much as tennis,” Kovacevic said.

Their home was a five-minute walk from the Central Park tennis courts, so Aleksandar first picked up a racket in the heart of Manhattan.

“I took my first tennis lessons there. It’s cool when I go there for the US Open. It’s a tourist attraction, and as a kid I didn’t even realize it was such a weird, unique place to start playing tennis. You very rarely see tennis players from Manhattan. When I was 15 or 16, I had to moving to Boca Raton, Florida at some point because it’s so much easier for tennis, all the other courts you want to find in New York are a 40 minute commute, and you get an hour a day in Central Park.

Every summer, Kovacevic traveled to Italy, where his mother’s family lived, and to Belgrade, where he had a grandfather. When Aleksandar died and tennis obligations began to increase, Aleksandar stopped returning to Serbia.

“We still have an apartment in Belgrade, but it is empty. Interestingly though, I played on red clay for the first time in Serbia, at Partizan and Crvena zvezda (Serbia’s two biggest clubs). I was 10 years old and that was the last time on red clay before this swing now.

Kovacevic: “It’s a dream come true”

It was hard to figure things out. Heading to Roland Garros, Kovacevic lost all three matches he played to Taro Daniel, Stefano Napolitano and Gianluca Mager. He trained for a good week, started to find his groove, but the draw was merciless as he drew Novak Djokovic in the very first round.

“It’s definitely a dream come true, he’s the best to ever play the game. If you asked me two years ago or before, I’d say that’s all I want and I don’t care if he kills me on the court or not. My mentality is different now, I want to do well well and I feel like I have the level to compete with most guys so playing Novak in the first round maybe not what I was hoping to see on the other hand it’s a dream come true to play against one of the big 3 one of these legends that box is being checked now but would be would have been more comfortable if we met in the third or fourth round, if I had won a couple of matches. I want to do my best and you never know. We all saw Fabian Marozsan In Rome, he hoped to take a few games away from Carlos Alcaraz and eventually won the match. Its sport. Anyway, I’m really excited.”

It was very valuable for me to see how Djokovic behaves off the court as well.

Djokovic invited Kovacevic to train in Belgrade, and while he has yet to take him up on the offer, a few conversations they had in New York a few years ago resonated deeply with the 24-year-old.

“In Adelaide we played football together, it was fun, but in New York a couple of years ago he gave me a lot of good tips that I still use to this day, especially fitness and nutrition. Didn’t reveal too much about her routine, but for me it was very valuable information. Until then, my college teammate Aleksandar Vukic was the most professional player I had ever seen, and even he didn’t know what exactly he was doing. So spending time with Novak and seeing how he works was valuable. Before matches, Novak spends an hour warming up before even hitting the ball and doing everything else, starting with mental preparation. It was very valuable for me to see how he behaves off the field as well. Like I said, I still use what I learned then.”

In April, Kovacevic was ranked 101 in the world, and now he has dropped to 114. He does not regret his decision to play on clay, as he thinks it was the best in the long run.

“I had a chance to go and play on hard courts in Korea where I did well last year. I knew that playing on clay might cost me in terms of ranking, but I had to face clay at some point. Its a dream of Top 100, but in the long run, it’s more important to learn how to play on red clay , so you can have a full career. I want to be a versatile player who can play well on all surfaces. I struggled the last few weeks but this week of training was huge for me, I feel like I’m finally getting used to it. It’s been a learning experience and the match with Novak will be just that, as well as getting to play the best in the world is awesome.

When asked what he thought was the hardest part of adapting to the red clay, Kovacevic quickly comes up with an answer:

“Honestly it’s getting under my feet, I feel a bit alienated from the surface for the first week, I was slipping and sliding all over the place. Finding my feet proved more difficult than the speed of the court itself. My game is a big serve and first ball after that, but I did well on an extremely slow hard court in Phoenix, so I was hoping it would be similar to clay. But the movement… When opponents are hitting behind you, it’s hard to stop, get your feet under and move back to the other side. Other than that, I think the biggest challenge has been mentally. Knowing that I haven’t played on red clay at all, and it’s hard to go up against guys who grew up in these things. At this point, after six weeks, I feel a lot more comfortable than I did at the beginning, I feel like I’m getting over the hump a little bit.”

“I loved Federer’s fluidity and tried to model my strokes after him” – Kovacevic

As a child, his father helped Aleksandar with his batting technique. Milan was surprised by Roger Federers fluency, so he asked his son to hit with one hand. And Aleksandar did, from the age of five.

– I also liked Federer, he was my favorite player in terms of the game. I loved his fluidity and tried to model my stroke after him.

For a few months, he has been coached by Brian Garber and Dean Goldfine, who travels with Ben Shelton, and previously worked with, among others, Sebastian Korda, Todd Martin and Andy Roddick.

“Also, my dad is close to anything tech, he’s just a super crazy, genius brain. He can’t really coach the mental side of things, and he can get in the way sometimes, but technically and analytically, he’s incredible.

Kovacevic, who grew up in New York, has been to the US Open many times. He remembers Djokovic and Gael Monfils battling it out when they were really young, but he had a picture of other players in his mind, not just the biggest stars.

“I loved watching Fabrice Santoro. I didn’t try to emulate anything of his game, but I remember watching him play an epic five-setter against James Blake at the US Open (in 2007). I liked watching many players, Olivier Rochus (former world number 24) for example, a shorter guy (168 cm) who also played a backhand with one hand.”

Off the field, Aleksandar enjoys electronic music, listening to podcasts and is “all over the place when it comes to TV shows (“I recently watched The Sopranos for the first time).

“Outside of tennis, my favorite thing is snowboarding. We drove to Pennsylvania for two hours, but now I have a really good Austrian friend. His name is Franz Weber (multiple speed skiing world record holder) and he has a house in Lake Tahoe, so we go skiing there when I have time. I also follow football, I grew up playing it and coach Garber loves it too, he’s a huge Manchester City fan.

Finally, we asked Aleksandar what his long-term goals are.

“I don’t want to go crazy, I just want to see how good I can be. I hope to be in the top 10 in the world at some point. First, I need to play elite, I still don’t know what that level looks like, so I need to play the best before I set such goals.