Serbia's Tennis Mania

When Serbia played Australia in the Davis Cup last September, 19,000 fans packed the stadium in Belgrade. The big joke among Serbs was that 18,000 of them were watching live tennis for the first time ever.
 
It’s not much of an exaggeration. Serbia’s explosion of interest in tennis has caught everyone off-guard. There is a scramble to build more courts, find more coaches to teach all the kids who want to take up the sport, even a struggle to keep stores stocked with enough sneakers.
 
Last year’s French Open was a high point for the young Serb tigers. Ana Ivanovic made the final, and Novak Djokovic and Jelena Jankovic both reached the semis. The three returned to Belgrade greeted by a rock-star welcome, with tens of thousands of fans crowding the square in front of the parliament building screaming, waving flags and carrying posters that said NOLE FOR PRESIDENT.
 
The three have done much more than make tennis the most popular sport in a country obsessed with team sports like soccer and basketball: They have changed the perception of Serbia internationally.
 
Let’s not forget that less than 10 years ago, Serbia was torn by war. While these three champions were learning the game, NATO bombs were raining down on Belgrade. In 2007 though, after years of somewhat hiding their nationality because of the war, these three kids were confidently wrapping themselves in the Serbian flag on American soil and proclaiming: "We are proud to be Serbs!"
 
Novak and Ana are becoming to Serbs what Posh and Becks are to Brits: People here want to know everything about them, including the secrets of their private lives, who they are dating, where they spend holidays, what they wear.
 
The excitement has crossed over to young people wanting to play tennis too. Svetislav Karlovic has been coaching for 20 years and has never seen anything like it.
 
"There is so much work, that I occasionally pray for rain to have a day off!" Karlovic said. "During the summer I worked even ten hours per day. I don’t know how to reject a kid whose wish to learn tennis is stronger than August heat."
 
Janko Tipsarevic, one of the young stars, told us: "I did some charity work in a big department store recently. A salesman told me that it is mission impossible in Belgrade to find tennis shoes with normal numbers. Everything is sold out."
 
Zoran Kojic is the director of Head Serbia. He revealed: "Since this boom, our sales have jumped at least 70 percent. That is the average for all of the companies that sell tennis racquets, balls, bags. I was in this business when Bobo Zivojinovic and Monica Seles played, but that was far from this."
 
Sead Dervisevic, the head of the Belgrade Tennis Association, says "the popularity of tennis has risen at least 30 percent in the last 12 months. Right now we have 180 or so courts, most of them on clay, including indoor. We need at least 100 more to cover all the children interested. The big problem is that there are big areas of the city without any tennis club, like Zemun with 300,000 inhabitants."
 
Dervisevic has played a very important role in the boom of Serbian tennis. He is the director of the club where youngsters started using an empty swimming pool to play.
 
"We started in 1992. The swimming pool was already emptied because we didn’t have money to heat the water," Dervisevic said. "They didn’t know what to do with it, and we suggested that we could lay the carpet down, use it for one winter and see what to do next."
 
Those kids would include Ivanovic, Jankovic and Tipsarevic, who is currently ranked 48th. Ana says: "I am proud of the club where I spent my childhood. That was  the most beautiful place for me, the best place to enjoy tennis."
 
Just before Christmas, Belgrade Arena was packed with 20,000 screaming fans for a charity doubles match between Djokovic, Tipsarevic, Ivanovic and Jankovic. It was an amazing spectacle for Slobodan Zivojinovic, who, a quarter century ago, was the first great Serbian player, leading the old Yugoslavia to three Davis Cup semifinals. "Bobo" is now president of the Serbian Tennis Federation.
 
"Back then I had to explain that I play ‘big’ tennis, not table tennis, which was much more popular at that time," says Zivojinovic.
 
He shouldn’t have that problem now.
 

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