The Discoverer of Champions
In the beginning there was just a tennis court, in the middle of a tourist resort in Pula, Istria, where Slovenian businessmen played their games. Today, after 18 editions, the 19th will be inaugurated on 23 June, and the court is where future tennis champions are born. For Miodrag Bozovic, then 15 and son of the family that managed the resort, during the socialist economy and a few years before the war that would devastate Yugoslavia, it was time to think about the future and dream big, both for himself and for that little court. "I told my father that I wanted to go to Harvard," explains Miodrag, speaking in perfect Italian. "And he gave me his approval."
Things changed, however, because Miodrag found out about Bocconi from one of his classmates, so he started to get information, he studied Italian after passing the general culture test and he enrolled in business economics. "It was 1991, I found housing in the residence hall, I had an intense university experience, with exchanges abroad, internships and rewarding meetings with several great professors such as Mario Monti, Pierluigi Fabrizi and Claudio Demattè."
At the end of his studies, Miodrag began a great career in investment banking: JP Morgan, CitiGroup, Banca IMI, where he worked in mergers and acquisitions, but in 1996, influenced by a tennis instructor who was working at his family's facility, he organized the first edition of a tournament for children under 10 years old, bringing together the best talents in the area. "In the first edition of the Smrikva Bowl", says Miodrag, "we started with 25 local kids, and now we are one of the most important tournaments for children under 10 in the world. This year we have enrollees from over 60 countries, even Australia." Miodrag, who left banking in 2007 to return to his family's company, is now dedicated full time to children's sports and talent scouting, "because," he says, "you never know where you'll find talent."
Over the years, Smrikva Bowl has seen some of the most interesting young talents pass through, "many of whom tailed off after a promising start," he says, "while others are now some of the most interesting players. Like Belinda Bencic, the young Swiss regarded as a future star, or Dominic Thiem, the best twenty year old in the world, who gave Nadal a scare in the second round of Roland Garros. Or Gianluigi Quinzi, the Italian who won the Junior Wimbledon last year. "
Every year the kids plant olive trees in the village, and inscribe their names in a deeply-felt symbolic gesture of peace: "I have suffered much from the war, and I have long sought to understand the causes - I even got a second degree in Milan, in political science. " And at the end of his journey is the tournament which sums up his vision, combining a passion for tennis and hope for a future that is better than the past, represented by these children. "This tournament does not need to make money, it is an event that aims to inspire children. The award, now as then, is a bicycle. But on the competitive level it has become a major event: suffice it to say that last year, among the eight winners of the four Grand Slams Junior trials, six have passed through here. "