'I beat Roger Federer then took heroin and started stealing as my life fell apart'
Nikola Gnjatovic was tipped to be a major tennis star before admitting that he was sidetracked by a "severe" drug addiction.
Nikola Gnjatovic was tipped to be the next prospect of Serbian tennis as a youngster, with Novak Djokovic’s father Srdjan naming him one of the most talented players he had seen. The Belgrade native said he defeated the likes of Roger Federer and Marat Safin as a youngster. Now aged 44, Gnjatovic has opened up on his “severe drug addiction” that cost him his tennis career after trying heroin for the first time as a 21-year-old.
Gnjatovic started playing tennis before the age of seven years old, enrolling in the Kosutnjak tennis club and becoming one of the nation’s hottest prospects in what was then Yugoslavia. Becoming the national champion in under-10s. By the time he was 16, Gnjatovic was crowned the senior national champion in both singles and doubles.
Throughout his junior years, the tennis ace beat a number of players who went on to have impressive careers on the professional circuit - not least Roger Federer. “I also played for the Davis Cup team of Serbia against Turkey and Morocco,” the 44-year-old told Balkanspress.com, per Sportal.
“[Janko] Tipsarevic, [Dusan] Vemic and [Goran] Tosic were also in the national team with me at that time. Before that, I beat Marat Safin and Fernando Gonzalez in the junior competition, and I beat Roger Federer in one training session. There was no one who didn't predict the top of the world for me.”
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But things changed for Gnjatovic after he became addicted to heroin, and he revealed that he started stealing in order to get drugs. The former tennis player continued: “I took heroin for the first time at the age of 21. Then my hell starts. I get into debt, into a severe drug addiction crisis, I start stealing to get drugs.
“I'm trying to keep playing tennis, but it's not working out for me. At that time, my family was falling apart, my life was a complete mess. I was in the hospital more than ten times. For 17 years I went through the horrors that drugs bring with them.”
Gnjatovic managed to turn his life around and now coaches children in Serbia, looking for the “new Novak” of the tennis world. But the former Davis Cup star has still faced some problems because of his past.
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“Former players and colleagues tell the parents of the children I coach that I am a former drug addict and that they should not give their children to me to teach them tennis,” he explained. However, the 44-year-old is motivated to help children stay on the right path after what he went through.
He added: “I want to work, to train gifted children for tennis, and thank God our country is full of them. I know what I went through, it was a huge and unfortunately too expensive life school for me, but that's why I can tell every kid right away, [stay] as far [away] as possible from drugs.
“I still know all those tennis tricks to pass on to kids that others can't or don't know. I want to give Serbia new tennis champions, a new Novak, a new Ana [Ivanovic], a new Jelena [Jankovic], and why not, a new Nikola Gnjatovic, the way he always should have been, champion and the strongest.”