NOVAK Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka weren’t the only winners coming out of Melbourne Park last month.
Werribee’s very own 18-year-old up-and-comer Masa Jovanovic made her Rod Laver Arena debut on the same day Azarenka scored her second women’s crown and came away with a neat gong of her own.
Jovanovic was down a break but managed to come back and win 6-3 in the deciding set to win the women’s singles title of the Amateur Australian Open World Final.
“It was such a rush playing on Rod Laver,” Jovanovic said of her experience.“We got a chair umpire and we got ball kids, so that was quite new.
“It was pretty cool,” she said.
Although she didn’t have 15,000 sets of eyes trained on her racket work, Jovanovic admits she had to ice the nerves mid-match.
“I started off pretty bad,” she said.
“I went straight down 2-0 because I was quite nervous and shaky and I was making quite a lot of mistakes, but I pulled myself together.
“I was like ‘hey, just relax, enjoy this moment’, and I got back up, and I won 6-3.”
The Serbian-born right-hander was given the racket at just two years of age and has since been competing for more than a decade.
But now, just a few months after completing her VCE at MacKillop College, Jovanovic is ready to ramp up her training schedule with an eye on the ultimate – a place in a grand slam event.
“The plan is definitely to become a pro player… but in time, for now I’m just training and we’ll see how I go,” she said.
“I’m definitely nearly there. My fitness is there and everything, I just need to be sitting on court a lot more and playing a lot more tournaments.
“And that can definitely happen since I’ve now finished school.”
It’s a mental adjustment Jovanovic knows she has to make before ever gracing the finely trimmed lawns of the All England Tennis Club, but sacrificing the normal teenage life she had also grown accustomed to remains her biggest challenge.
“I think it’s just those teenage years, like going out, friends,” she explained.
“There are a lot of sacrifices that I’ve made for tennis, especially hanging out with friends and the social life.
“But I reckon the sacrifices I’ve made have done me pretty good, because I’ve got this far and I’m quite happy.”
