Jelena Genčić

Jelena Genčić (, ; 9 October 1936 – 1 June 2013) was a Serbian tennis and handball player and coach.

In the 1970s she became a junior tennis coach and was later credited for playing a major role in the early development of numerous future top class professional players and Grand Slam champions. Among the players she discovered and coached are Monica Seles, Novak Djokovic, Goran Ivanišević, Mima Jaušovec, Iva Majoli, and Tatjana Ječmenica. Genčić-coached players went on to collect 36 Grand Slam single titles: Djokovic 24, Seles 9, Ivanišević 1, Jaušovec 1, and Majoli 1.

Early life and education Born as one of seven children to Serbian father Jovan and Austrian mother Hermina, Jelena came from the prominent Genčić family in Serbia. Her grandfather Lazar Genčić studied medicine in Vienna, becoming one of Serbia's first surgeons in addition to setting up and running a military hospital while simultaneously holding the rank of a Royal Serbian Army general in World War I's Serbian campaign. Her great uncle Đorđe Genčić was the interior minister in the cabinet of Nikola Pašić and one of the chief conspirators of the May Coup.

She graduated with a degree in art history from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy.

Career Sports Genčić was a handball and tennis player, playing the two sports in parallel. She began pursuing tennis in 1948 at the age of eleven in the Fifth Mixed Experimental High School in Senjak. Before becoming the goalkeeper of the school's handball team, she tried to play football with the boys, but they often forced her to play in goal, and it was there that she discovered her goalkeeping potential. two times in singles, in 1958 and 1964, six times in women's pairs, and twelve times in mixed pairs, while she was second 11 times.

Genčić's hobby was taking photos and in 1975 she had an exhibition of portraits of tennis players during the game.

In the early 1980s, as the captain of the TSJJ, she traveled with Seles and Ivanišević to several tournaments around Europe, including the 1985 European Under-14 championships in Heidelberg, where the 12-year-old Seles duly won, but Ivanišević was disqualified in the semifinals after behaving badly and breaking at least one racket. She found herself tested with the young Ivanišević, who at the time already was known as a wild child.

In late 1992, the president of Genex, a state-owned company that operated tourism in Yugoslavia, asked Genčić to be the director of a summer tennis camp that he wanted to run at its newly built complex in Kopaonik, a popular tourist destination in the mountains. After accepting the offer, Genčić herself organized the tennis camp made up of a group of young players from the TK Partizan, which lasted 9 weeks. On the very first morning, she met the six-year-old Novak Djokovic, whose parents worked in a pizzeria just across the road from the tennis courts, and she invited him to join them on the court after being impressed by his eagerness to play Upon seeing the child Djokovic playing tennis, she stated: "This is the greatest talent I have seen since Monica Seles. ultimately it was Genčić who gave them those assurances.

After retiring from TV at the end of the 1990s, she opened a tennis school in Banjica, She had been coaching until just days before her death from a heart attack. Djokovic then tried to win the trophy not only to complete his first career grand slam, but to pay a tribute in her honor. Furthermore, the final match of the World Handball Championship in Belgrade in 1957, in which Genčić helped the Yugoslav team win bronze, had been held in the Tašmajdan Stadium. Although the Handball Federation of Serbia supported this initiative, the renaming never took place.