Filip Krajinovic has been a professional tennis player nearly half his life. He knows himself on the tennis court as well as he knows anything else and after 14 years on the tour he was so sure grass-court tennis was not for him that he barely even tried: “Every year I find a way to skip the tournaments, just coming to Wimbledon, losing first round,” he said last week. “It’s been the last 10 years like that.”
And yet, it turns out, he was completely wrong. This year, at 30, he arrived at Queen’s for his long-awaited first main-draw match on a grass court at an ATP event, and briskly reached the final. He did not turn into a serve and volley player overnight, nor did he develop a wicked backhand slice. He simply embraced the surface for the first time.
