Hamad Mededovic — A promising talent capable of reaching great heights

Chennai: The first impression of 19-year-old Hamad Međedović playing tennis is that of a promising t

The first impression of 19-year-old Hamad Međedović playing tennis is that of a promising talent with some powerful weapons in his armoury.

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.

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