AO19 Ones to Watch: Borna Coric

Few young players have made a more of a splash than Borna Coric.

In just his 14th match on the main tour, in Basel late 2014, the 17-year-old Croat stunned Rafael Nadal. A couple of months later in Dubai, he toppled Andy Murray.

A teenage, Croatian version of Novak Djokovic, with close-cropped hair, bruising baseline game and hard-nosed competitiveness, Coric seemed destined to join his idol at the top.

But for the next three years, he plateaued. His 2015-17 seasons finished with near identical, narrow losing records: 26-28, 22-24 and 24-26. “I was not going where I wanted to,” Coric recalls. Top-50 finishes didn’t cut it for the young man who has “There is nothing worse in life than being ordinary” tattooed on his playing arm.

“I stopped working on some aspects of my tennis,” he admitted with admirable honesty. “I had that big breakthrough when I was very young and I think I was not mature enough. My game was not on that level yet. And then all the people expected that it’s going to keep going and it’s going to happen.”

Knee surgery in late 2016 was a brake on his progress, as was an ever-changing coaching line-up, although Coric insisted: “I cannot blame anyone else for my bad results.” A settled coaching arrangement with Riccardo Piatti and Kristijan Schneider and a gruelling, six-week pre-season saw everything change in 2018.