October 29, 2024

Open Court

MORE TENNIS THAN YOU'LL EVER NEED

WASHINGTON – Milos Raonic Inc. is hiring again.

All jokes aside, the 26-year-old Canadian has added another coach to his advisory board for the hard-court season.

Dusan Vemic, the 41-year-old Croatian-born Serb who has been part of Novak Djokovic’s coaching team on several occasions, has joined Team Raonic for the summer.

Mark Knowles, the retired doubles specialist who began working with Raonic during the grass-court season, also will be back. And main coach Richard Piatti will be in Cincinnati and at the US Open, Raonic told Tennis.Life.

Vemic, though, is flying solo this week at the Citi Open.

Here’s what they looked like on the practice court Monday, with Kei Nishikori on the other side of the net.

Vemic was a top-150 singles player with a big serve. But his best results came in doubles. He reached his career high of No. 31 in 2009.

For a brief time after he retired, Vemic and Petar Popovic worked together with Andrea Petkovic of Germany. It was during that period that the German reached the top 10.

He worked with Djokovic and now-former coach Marian Vajda during many of the Grand Slam events from 2011 to 2013. He last was on hand for the Miami Open last year. Vemic also is a coach with the Serbian Davis Cup team and was the coach of the Serbian Olympic men’s team in Rio last year.

Vemic coached the legendary Bryan brothers for the last part of 2016. As of Wimbledon, he still was coaching them. The Serb’s various biographies and online resumés still state that he is the coach of the Bryan brothers.

The Bryans won the Atlanta ATP event last week, and are in Washington this week for the Citi Open. But Vemic is with Raonic.  

We will investigate.

Vemic Rogers Cup memories

Vemic teamed up with Djokovic in doubles at the Rogers Cup. They lost to Rafael Nadal and his 41-year-old, retired coach Francisco Roig.

The standout tennis.life memory of Vemic came at the Rogers Cup back in 2009. 

Rafael Nadal wanted to play doubles. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t hook up with a partner. So he ended up playing with his associate coach Francisco Roig.

Roig was 41 at the time, and retired a decade.

Their opponents? Djokovic and Vemic, who was near his career-high ranking in doubles at the time. Nadal and Roig won, 7-5, 6-4. It had to be a little bit embarrassing!

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