Ben Shin
Matija Pecotić defeated Jack Sock 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 in Delray Beach.
Matija Pecotic’s Tuesday night match may seem like any other match, but it is actually one of the best stories this tennis season. On February 14, Matija Pecotić beat former top-ten player, Jack Sock. The two met in the first round of the Delray Beach Open, an ATP 250 tournament. Pecotić won in split sets, losing the first 4-6 and then dominating in the last two sets, 6-2 and 6-2.
Matija Pectotic is a 33-year-old and has a full-time job as the Director of Capital Markets for a real estate investment company. He also plays semi-professional tennis and ranks 784th in the world. As a junior, Pecotić never broke into the Top 1,000 ITF Junior rankings. He went to Princeton University from 2009 to 2013 and was a three-time Ivy League Player of the Year. Additionally, he was ranked second in the college tennis rankings. Pecotić began his professional tennis career in 2014 and achieved his career-high ranking of 206. In 2016, he received a small stomach surgery, which forced him to stop playing for almost a year. Pecotić said his surgery had “changed the trajectory of [his] tennis timeline and [his] tennis career.”
While he had time off, he decided to apply to business school. He ended up getting accepted into Harvard Business school and chose that over his professional tennis career. When Pecotić was at Harvard, he got to know a member of the Harvard men’s tennis coaching staff, Andrew Rueb, which then led to him becoming a volunteer assistant coach. After he graduated from Harvard, he gave himself another chance to be a professional tennis player. He made some good progress, however, Covid-19 stopped him, and he had to get a regular job. He currently is the Director of Capital Markets for Mexford Real Estate Investors, and still tries to play tennis in the morning prior to work.
Pecotić signed up as an alternate to the qualifying draw for the Delray Beach Open. He just dropped his racquets off to get strung and didn’t expect to get in. The next morning, he went to pick up his racquets, and the supervisor said that a player might pull out. This meant that he might have a chance to play in the qualifying draw. Pecotić only learned he got into the tournament 30 minutes before he was going to play. To the surprise of many, he went on to beat world no. 224 Stefan Kozlov and later, no. 409 Tennys Sandgren 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. To continue this amazing run, he beat Jack Sock, a former top-ten player.