

By Chris Oddo | Friday, March 6, 2015

Thanasi Kokkinakis and Borna Coric both gained invaluable experienc--albeit with differing results--during Friday's Davis Cup action.



Photo Source: AFP

For those who decided not to lament the absence of a few of the game’s biggest stars during Friday’s opening Davis Cup World Group ties, there was plenty to get excited about. While Davis Cup can (and quite often does) provide fans with the opportunity to see colossal names like Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Murray represent their countries in the sport’s ultimate team competition, it can also provide young, earnest players with chances to soak up an invaluable experience—and maybe a win.



In rising 18-year-old Borna Coric’s case the win didn’t come. In it’s place, the ticketed-for-stardom Croat received a heartbreaking defeat at the hands of Serbia’s Viktor Troicki on Friday in Kraljevo, Serbia. Coric found himself red-lining his game and seemingly headed to a resounding victory when he ploughed head-first into a bump in the road. From two sets and a break up, the youngster lost his energy, and his form, and proceeded to get trounced by the veteran and former Davis Cup title winner Troicki, 4-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-1.



Afterwards, though disappointed, the strong-willed Coric didn’t find it too hard to see the bright spots. “I was playing one of the best matches of my life until two sets up and 2-0,” he said, “and then I missed a couple of volleys which I actually shouldn’t have missed. He broke me back and he got some momentum and then I started to feel some of the pain.”



The pain would be pretty much non-stop for Coric from there, as Troicki, fueled by the passionate crowd and guided by his experience, put his pedal to the metal to finish off Coric swiftly.



Davis Cup is not for the meek at heart, and for Coric, who finds himself as the de facto leader of the Croatian team without Marin Cilic in the fold, the pressure and the responsibility can be just as fatiguing as running down well-struck groundstrokes. But that which does not kill an 18-year-old who is likely destined to be one of the game’s top players in a few years’ time, will only make him stronger.



“It’s going to show me my weaknesses and what I need to work on,” said Coric, hopefully. “I just need to get used to [playing five-set matches], playing maybe ten or twenty matches more and I’m sure I’m going to get there very soon.”



“It’s better that this happens sooner than later,” said Croatian captain Zeljko Krajan. “Just two years ago he was playing his first time in Davis Cup and now he’s a kind of leader of the team. It was just a lot of pressure on him. It’s a lesson that he’s going to take and carry with him and that’s a positive thing.”



Another 18-year-old, Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia, came away with the victory as well as the experience on Friday when he improbably turned around a match that looked like he had no business being in. The world No. 133 rallied past Lukas Rosol, 4-6, 2-6, 7-5, 7-5, 6-3, to earn his first victory in a live Davis Cup rubber.



Kokkinakis’s sticktuitiveness was rewarded when he finally broke through with Rosol serving for the match to earn his first break of the day. Then he learned how to turn a little bit of momentum into a colossal win. It left him beaming afterwards.



“It’s a huge win for me,” he said. “Especially down two sets to love and him serving for the match at 5-4. I think I got to deuce once before that, which is pretty remarkable really. You never know, but out of five sets, you keep hanging in there and you keep having cracks.”



Kokkinakis said his coach, Wally Masur, told him to smile and enjoy it when he was down two sets to love. “I told him it was hard to when you’re getting absolutely killed,” the Adelaide native later said of his dialog with the captain. “I told him it’s hard to smile when you’re doing this in your first live rubber.”



But Kokkinakis would be left smiling in the end, and it was because he believed he could win, even with his more experienced and higher-ranked opponent serving for the match. “I just know that in myself I have a lot of belief,” he said. “I think he got a little bit nervous in trying to serve the match out and when it got to five-all I knew it was game on. Even I was down two sets to love and it was even in the third—I felt ready, I felt good.”



For young players like Coric and Kokkinakis, Rome clearly isn’t built in a day. There are many rivers to cross to get to the ATP’s Promised Land, but the trials and tribulations that they can potentially face on the Davis Cup stage—whether in winning or losing efforts—can certainly lay a foundation of belief and help fine-tune their personal blueprint for success.



In that regard, both Coric and Kokkinakis were winners on Friday. The same could be said for Jan-Lennard Struff, who battled valiantly in defeat to Gilles Simon in Frankfurt, or Switzerland’s Henri Laaksonen, who battled back from two sets down to defeat Belgium’s Ruben Bemelmans.



Even without some of the game’s biggest stars, the heartbeat of Davis Cup ticks on. Spurred on by raucous crowds, patriotic fervor and camaraderie, the tiny steps that make future stars are taken, whether we see them or not.