One of the most promising young athletes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 13-year-old tennis player Tea Kovačević from Gradiška in Republika Srpska, has won the most prestigious tennis tournament in the United States, which is one of the most important in the world.
She has completed competitions in the USA in singles and doubles and is returning home with two trophies.
This is one of the most important tournaments globally, where more than 3,000 of the best young players from the USA and 50 other countries participate at the regional, national, and international levels.
The eighth-best tennis player in the world in the under-14 category won the same tournament in Florida in 2019 when she lost only four games in five matches, setting new standards in junior tennis.
The tournament in Palm Beach, named “Little Mo” after the first American tennis player, Maureen Connolly, who managed to win a calendar Grand Slam at the age of 18 in 1953, gathered the youngest and “brightest stars” of junior tennis from around the world. According to Kovačević, this year, in addition to boys and girls from the U.S., 700 juniors from around the world applied to the tournament, which has been held since 1968.
“Little Mo is unique in that it gives talented boys and girls with high performances the opportunity to assess their abilities in relation to players born the same year from the U.S.,” said Kovačević, whose role models are Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka.
Her favorite victory is, as she said, the one from Turkey at the “Development Tennis Europe” tournament, where she managed to defeat the best tennis player in the world in the under-14 category, Lia Belibova from Moldova.
Tea added that her goal is to participate in the junior competition at Wimbledon next year, at the Orange Bowl tournament in Miami, and win titles at the Eddie Herr tournament also in Florida. She also aims to defend both titles from “Little Mo.”
“I was glad that I could play with the most talented players from around the world and show what tennis is played in our country,” said Tea, who trains for six hours daily and played in 30 tournaments this year.
Tea, coached by her father Marko, is a student at the Vasa Čubrilović School, and she achieves results with the support of the school director Vlado Stanišljević and the mayor of the Gradiška municipality, Zoran Adžić.
Source: RTRS
