The fabulous story of Matija Pecotic, the tennis player-entrepreneur who studied at Harvard and achieved his first victory in an ATP tournament at the age of 33

He Delray Beach ATP 250 which is played on hard courts in Florida and which throughout its history has had champions such as Lleyton Hewitt and Juan Martín Del Potro, left this week one of those amazing tennis stories. It is that of Matija Pecotic, the tennis player-entrepreneur.

AND Croatian, he is 33 years old and works full time as director of capital markets for a real estate investment company. At the same time, this Tuesday he made his main-draw debut of a major tour tournament and earned his first winnothing more and nothing more than before the champion of the 2017 edition, the American and former top ten Jack Sock.

It peaked at 206 on the chart in November 2015the year he won the title in four tournaments Futures played over five finals and in which he was also a finalist at the Challenger in Suzhou, China. At that time, he dedicated his life to tennis with the goal, like many, of establishing himself in the world of racket.

However, an illness stopped him. “I contracted a severe staph infection and was bedridden for eight months. This changed my trajectory and my tennis career,” he explained. pecotic to the ATP site at the time of access as an alternative to the previous phase of Delray open beach.

When he recovered, already at 26, he didn’t have the same energy to steadfastly pursue his dream of being successful in tennis. Although he didn’t hang up his racket, he decided to focus on his studies and was accepted into the Harvard Business School. There is a part of his training, perhaps the most important, to reach the position he currently holds. “My boss gave me permission to leave work early. I’ll have to ask him for another day off.”she said, between laughter, after batting Sock.

Andrea Rueb, one of the men’s tennis coaches at Harvard, was the one who gave him the spark. “I hadn’t played for a while and he came up to me and said, ‘we’d love to have you with the boys, you can come anytime’. Soon I started training six days a week and rediscovered my love for the game .” He recalled in a testimony that he had recovered the Punto de Break specialized site.​

Four years after the stomach operation he had to undergo, and after a 2018 in which he completely concentrated on his entrepreneurial work and did not play official matches, he has won another title: 6-2 and 6-1 against Camillo Ugo Carabelli in the M15 of Cancun in 2019.

He joined the Delray Beach ATP simply because he had played at the club that hosts that tournament, as leisure entertainment left over from his hectic 9-18 work schedule.

“I love this game and I know it’s not forever, so I try to maximize every day. I train five or six times a week if I can. Sometimes I train with my boss, who is 70 years old. This week I trained with a guy who is probably over 50.”, contacted. Days later, she left to Jack Sock that, although it was not he who won the Masters 1000 in Paris in 2017 and reached the number 8 position in the world, it was still a tough test for him.

Here’s how he explained it: “I woke up on Saturday morning and said, ‘I better go to Delray and get my rackets.’, he detailed. Return within a few hours Yosuke Watanuki gave him a place in the main draw. Incredible.

The native of Belgrade, Serbia, who played collegiately between 2009 and 2013 for Princeton University, qualified for the qualifying stage, where he beat Stefan Koslov and Tennys Sandgren, and now, after winning the former shift, moved up 211 places in the standings (from 784th to 573rd). Beat Marco Giron tonight it will enter the top 500 in the world.