Nikola Pilic

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Nikola Pilić, 1975

Nikola "Niki" Pilić (born August 27, 1939 in Split , Kingdom of Yugoslavia , now Croatia ) is a former Yugoslav tennis player and coach.

Career

In the 1950s and 1960s he was a successful tennis player and part of the so-called " Handsome Eight ", the first players in the World Championship Tennis (WCT) founded in 1968 . The WCT was the first professional tennis tournament series for men and existed until the introduction of the ATP Tour in 1990.

His greatest successes were winning the doubles competition at the 1970 US Open together with Pierre Barthès and making it to the individual finals of the 1973 French Open , which he lost to Ilie Năstase .

Pilić was also the trigger for the strike at the Wimbledon tournament in 1973 . Since he had allegedly refused to compete for the Yugoslav Davis Cup team in their game against New Zealand , Pilić was banned from the World Tennis Federation and could not participate in Wimbledon. In protest, 81 players, including 13 of the 16 seeded, canceled the tournament.

After his active career, Pilić became a coach and won the Davis Cup with three different teams: As a team captain he won with the German team in 1988, 1989 and 1993, and in 2005 with the Croatian team . In 2010 he worked as a consultant to the Serbian winning team . From 2015 to 2017 he took on an advisory role for the German Davis Cup team.

Pilić ran a training center and tennis boarding school for young players in Oberschleißheim . Among his students were many players from the former Yugoslavia , including Novak Đoković .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Snježana Kobešćak: Nikola Pilić - 'Prus sa Balkana'. Deutsche Welle , July 19, 2010, accessed on April 29, 2020 (Croatian).
  2. ↑ Tom Koch: It was 20 years ago today. D Magazine, March 1988, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  3. ↑ THE HISTORY OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS. AELTC, archived from the original ; accessed on April 29, 2020 (English).
  4. ↑ Joe Jares: May fortnight for Wimbledon ... Sports Illustrated , July 2, 1973, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Niki Pilic before historic victory. In: nwzonline.de . November 30, 2005, accessed December 5, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Doris Henkel: Total Presence. In: taz, the daily newspaper, March 4, 2015
  7. ↑ Niki Pilic stops working as a consultant at the DTB. In: Spiegel Online. Spiegel Online, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Marlee Meinecke: Novak Djokovic: “One of my best decisions”. Tennis Magazine, March 15, 2019, accessed April 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Pilić, Nikola
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pilić, Niki (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav tennis player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Split , Yugoslavia