The ATP Youth Final Championship, in which players under 21 years of age participated, ended in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). The winner of the tournament was the representative of Serbia, Hamad Medjedovic. The 20-year-old athlete won all three group matches, after which he won the semi-finals and the final. In the decisive match, Medjedovic, ranked 110th in the ATP rankings, defeated the world’s number 36 racket player, Arthur Fiss, in a tense fight 3:4 (6:8), 4:1, 4:2, 3:4 (9:11), 4:1. In the fourth set, the Serbian saved two match points!
“I can’t believe I won this title. But this gives me confidence going into 2024. Arthur is an incredible player. He’s in the top 40 for a reason. That’s why I’m very happy,” Hamad said after the match, as quoted by the ATP press service.
By winning the tournament, Medjedovic achieved several interesting achievements. He became the first Serbian to win the Junior Finals, which appeared on the ATP calendar in 2017. For the title without a single defeat, he won 514 thousand dollars in prize money – this is the maximum amount for the winner in the still short history of the tournament. Before this, Hamad, who has been acting professionally since 2021, earned $415,858 in his career, less than in less than a full week in Saudi Arabia! Additionally, Medjedovic became the lowest scoring champion in the history of the junior final. And in five matches he scored up to 69 aces, which is also a tournament record.
Considering that Hamad is from Serbia, it is not difficult to guess which tennis player is his idol. 24-time TBS champion Novak Djokovic, who won the ATP Final Championship for the seventh time in November, regularly sent messages of encouragement to his young compatriot throughout the tournament.
“We are both from Serbia. He won a big tournament, a real one, and I won a junior tournament. Of course, this is great. And I am glad that I was able to follow his path to a certain extent,” Medjedovic is quoted in the ATP press service.
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Hamad was 16 when he first trained with Djokovic. Realizing that the young man had potential, Novak began to support his compatriot to make it easier for him to break into the professionals. And he was quick to give important advice.
“You can learn a lot from him both on and off the court. He does everything for his tennis, even when he is not training. He told me more than once: you have to live tennis, even when he doesn’t get on the court. You have to do everything you can for your tennis. When you sleep, he watches what you eat, where you go, you have to constantly think about what can make you better,” Medjedovic said in an interview with the ATP press service in May 2023.
And Hamad met Novak for the first time as a child, on his birthday, when he was nine or ten years old. This is the gift that dad gave him. “It was a surprise for my ninth or tenth birthday. I remember that day I was training and my father told me: come on, let’s go somewhere. We went with my coach and I saw that we were going to his [Джоковича] tennis center
Until the last moment I couldn’t believe I would meet him. I remember we were waiting for him and he appeared out of nowhere. When I saw it, I was just shocked. “This was our first meeting,” said the Serbian tennis player in the same interview.
According to Medzejovic, without Djokovic’s financial help, it would have been difficult for him. “He helps me financially, he provides me with courts, coaches, everything I need for my career. He helped me a lot. He provided everything a professional tennis player needs. He paid for it. It was useful. He just helped me when I needed it and he still helps me with everything. I am glad that he helps me,” states the Serbian.
Hamad Medjedovic and Novak Djokovic
Photo: from the personal archive of Hamad Medzhedovich.
The extent of Djokovic’s role was best summed up by Eldin Medjedovic, Hamad’s father. “We haven’t spent a single cent. Believe me, this is a considerable amount in the world of tennis, but quite the opposite.
Imagine, the best player in the world calls my son to work together in the preseason. It’s like Messi or Ronaldo telling you “let’s play football” or “let me know if you need anything,” Medjedovic Sr. said in an interview with Serbian publication Sportal in 2022.
And Hamad’s coach is the captain of the Serbian tennis team, former world number 12, Viktor Troicki.
“It is very good to have a person like Víctor by your side. He shares his experience with me. He is very good and hardworking. I really enjoy spending time with him,” says the young athlete.
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As we see, in the 2023 season, support for Djokovic began to bear fruit. Medjedovic began competing quite regularly in ATP tournaments. He still has no finals and much less titles, but he already has two semi-finals: Gstaad and Astana. In these tournaments, the Serbian obtained his biggest victories to date. In the 1/8 Gstaad, Hamad broke the resistance of the 2020 US Open champion Dominic Thiem, and in the Astana quarterfinals he was stronger than Jiri Legecka, who at that time was in the top 30 of the world rankings.
“The season went well. The first three or four months were a little difficult. It took us a while to start doing what we worked on during the preseason. After a couple of months, everything started working. I performed well in India in February. I reached the semi-finals for the first time in a long time. Then everything was better. I also reached the semi-finals in Gstaad. For me it was very important to beat a couple of players from the top 100,” the ATP press service quotes the Serbian.
Hamad Medjedovic after defeating Arthur Fiss in the final of the 2023 ATP Junior Final Championship in Jeddah
Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images
According to Medjedovic, he considers himself an aggressive player. “I consider myself a very aggressive player on the court. I try to dictate my conditions. I consider myself a good pitcher.
I’m not going to say many good things about myself. But I think I have a great serve, a great forehand. And my style of play is to behave aggressively on the court,” he said in an interview with the ATP press service in November.
And Djokovic noted last year that his pupil has been steadily improving lately. “He deserves these successes for all the efforts he has made over the last year and a half. His work ethic has changed a lot. He completely changed the way he trained and competed, changing his diet, recovery work, some habits and much more.
In terms of play and fitness, he already deserves a place in the top 100. But some steps take time. “He has a team of experts who monitor him throughout the day and work properly to make him go higher and higher,” Sportskeeda quotes Novak.
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Djokovic is already 36 years old and in the coming years, no matter how you look at it, he will retire. However, Serbian tennis fans will have someone to support on the professional tour. And if Laszlo Djere and Dusan Lajovic can already be considered veterans, then 24-year-old Miomir Kecmanovic, and even more so our today’s hero, can count on a long and successful career.
Medjedovic’s success in the future depends mainly on himself. Before his eyes is the example of Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Stefanos Tsitsipas, who, after winning titles in the youth final, after a while managed to reach a fundamentally different level. And Djokovic will help in tennis moments.
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