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Rising Danka Kovinic Will Face Her Idol in Charleston Tonight


Not many have heard of Montenegro’s highest-ranked player, Danka Kovinic, but Jelena Jankovic has.

Charleston: Lauren Davis Knocks off Top-Seeded Eugenie Bouchard

That’s because Jankovic has mentored the 20-year-old ever since the two met on a tennis court at a kid’s day in Serbia when Kovinic was ten.

Lindsay Gibbs of the Changeover documents their first meeting nicely in this piece. Here’s a snippet:


“She asked me to hit a couple of balls with her,” Jankovic said of her protege. “I said, ‘You’re so talented, You’re so cute,’ and she was so excited. Then she went to hit the ball and she like swung at the ball and fell over. She tripped and she was on the ground. She was so funny. So I remember that.”

Kovinic remembers that day well, although a different memory sticks out to her. “I wanted badly to win a point against her,” she said. “I lost one, and almost start to crying, and then she said, ‘Okay, come on we play one more.’ Then I was so happy that I win the next point because she make ‘mistake.'”


Kovinic has burst onto the scene this week in Charleston, qualifying for the Family Circle Cup, then upsetting Christina McHale and Belinda Bencic to reach the quarters. That in and of itself was big news. Even bigger was the fact that she’ll be facing former Family Cirlcle Cup champion Jankovic on Center Court in the night session on Thursday.

“That was one of my inspirations today to beat Bencic because I was practicing all my life to play with Jelena,” Kovinic said after taking out Belinda Bencic in three sets on Wednesday. “I was really like looking forward to play with her and I'm so happy that I have a chance to play tomorrow.”

Kovinic has been mentored off and on by Jankovic over the years, and she even had the chance to partner with her for doubles last year in Bogota, but this will be their first tour-level meeting. “That's really it's kind of like unreal, you know, that I was hitting balls with her when she was like 10 years old,” Jankovic said before Kovinic defeated Bencic, about the possibility of playing her, “and it was her dream to just meet me, and now I might be playing against her. It's really crazy, but very nice at the same time.”


 

That was the best players party EVER! πŸ’ƒπŸŽ‰ @familycirclecup @jjelicious #FCC2015

A video posted by Kovinic Danka (@montenegrina94) on

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