Croatian's magical summer not over yet
©Corinne Dubreuil / FFTWhen Donna Vekic was just 16 years old, she reached her first WTA final at a tournament in Tashkent.
The Croatian was the youngest player to make a final on tour in six years and turned heads with her powerful groundstrokes and raw talent. At 17, she claimed her first WTA title in Kuala Lumpur, becoming the first player under 18 to win a WTA trophy for eight years.
A decade later, Vekic is experiencing a summer of firsts, as she reached a maiden Grand Slam semi-final at Wimbledon before clinching a dream silver medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Hitting new milestones at 28 feels a lot different to Vekic compared to her teen years.
“I’m probably a lot more relaxed. I stay grounded a lot more. Even the losses I don’t take them so hard anymore,” Vekic told rolandgarros.com on Friday after moving into the US Open fourth round.
A career-threatening knee surgery in 2021 drove Vekic to consider retirement but she has officially come out the other side stronger, armed with fresh perspective and lots of confidence.
“Of course I’m older, looks like wiser as well,” she says with a smile. “At the end of the day, when you put things into perspective, it’s just another match, there are a lot more important things going on.”
That level-headed approach can come in handy when she takes on No.7 seed Zheng Qinwen in the US Open last 16 on Sunday, which will be a rematch of their Olympics gold-medal bout from four weeks ago.
Vekic enters the contest having won16 of her last 20 matches – a stretch that began on the grass courts of Bad Homburg, where she reached the final on the eve of Wimbledon – and she has yet to drop a set at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center this fortnight.
The Monaco resident has the silver medal with her here in New York but she isn’t using it as a source of extra motivation when she takes on the woman who denied her gold in Paris.
“That's done. I have it here just to remind me that I have a medal. Yeah, it's just a new match. Whatever. She can have the gold medal. It's fine,” said Vekic, who is looking to reach a second consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final, and fourth overall.
Vekic told reporters in her press conference on Friday she is “motivated more than ever” at the moment, which she didn’t necessarily expect after fulfilling her ultimate goal for the season by winning an Olympic medal.
She is buoyed by a great deal of self-belief, which is a natural consequence of winning so many matches.
“Would I say that I came to New York thinking, okay, I'm going to win US Open? No. Once you get through the first couple of rounds, everything is possible,” she explained.
“Nowadays, I think everyone has a chance to win. It's just a matter of how you are feeling on the day over the two weeks. It's tough for sure to win a Slam. It's the toughest thing ever in tennis, but I do believe I have a chance.”
A contributing factor to Vekic’s career renaissance is the addition of Pam Shriver to her team as a co-coach and mentor nearly two years ago. A US Open finalist in 1978 and a 21-time Grand Slam champion in women’s doubles, Shriver has become an important part of Team Vekic, alongside Croatian coach Nick Horvat.
“I think Donna’s doing great with maturing as an athlete and I feel a lot of satisfaction to see her have these results,” Shriver, who is also doing broadcast work for ESPN, told rolandgarros.com.
“Just knowing that she’s more prepared now, I think, than ever to be able to have carryover and to be able to understand what it takes to have a quality tournament; not one every six months, or one every three or four months, but really try and string them together. Which, no matter your era, it’s not easy to do, but it’s especially hard now because of the depth.
“One of the biggest differences from my day to Donna’s day, is that there’s not one match off, it’s very rare. You have to be willing to compete and be resilient during each match and I feel like that’s the part where she’s really growing into her own.”
One of the things Shriver tried to help Vekic with the most is introducing what the American calls a “hold-serve mindset”, to make her charge realise she can be “one of the top four, say handful of servers on the tour”.
At this US Open, Vekic leads the women’s field in percentage of points won behind the first serve (80%) and she is ranked joint-sixth on the aces leaderboard with 16 struck through three rounds.
“Every time they put the (serve) statistics out, I’m always in the top 10. So I need to push a little bit more to be in the top five,” said Vekic.
“But I think here I’ve been serving really well. The last couple of months I’ve been serving really well and it definitely makes a difference for me.”
Looking ahead to Vekic’s rematch with Zheng, Shriver is happy to see them square off again so soon after the Olympics.
©Marine Andrieux / FFT“Believe me, in this situation, it’s going to be turned into a positive for Donna as best we can. I think it’s exciting that it’s happening this soon,” said Shriver.
“First off, with my women’s tennis fan hat on, this is what we all want, it’s we do want rematches of big matches. And I know the score, it was about as close as a 3 and 2 can be – there was a lot of good stuff in that match (at the Olympics).”
Both Shriver and Vekic know that facing Zheng on a hard court, as opposed to clay like the Olympics, could come in the Croatian’s favour.
“The whole thing collectively is all good for Donna trying to understand that she does have a new place in the game, as a developing top-10 player. I feel she has the skillset to be there and she now is getting the belief, and you never know what can happen,” added Shriver.
Vekic and Zheng have split their two previous hard-court meetings and at this point know exactly what to expect from one another in a match.
“She has a huge serve, which, yeah, it's tough. Then she plays aggressive. I think my goal will be to make her move and try to be the first one to open up the court,” said Vekic.
“It's going to be completely different for sure. Next match is just a fourth-round match. It's not a gold medal match.”
ROLAND-GARROS
19 May - 8 June 2025
