{"id":293653,"date":"2025-11-19T16:53:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/293653\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:53:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:53:30","slug":"djokovic-arrives-in-bologna-to-honor-the-man-he-considered-his-tennis-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/293653\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic arrives in Bologna to honor the man he considered his tennis father"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">Novak Djokovic, Boris Becker, and Ivan Ljubicic took part on Wednesday in Bologna, host city of the Davis Cup, in a tribute to Croatian tennis figure Nikola \u201cNiki\u201d Pilic, who passed away in September of this year.<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">The ceremony honoring Pilic\u2014considered a tennis father figure to Djokovic, who did not want to miss the event\u2014took place just before the Davis Cup quarterfinal tie between Italy and Austria.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">\u201cHe was more than a coach to me. He was part of my family. I would not be who I am today without him,\u201d Djokovic said following Pilic\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">The Davis Cup was one of Pilic\u2019s favorite tournaments. He lifted the trophy five times with three different nations: Germany (1988, 1989, and 1993), Croatia (2005), and Serbia (2010).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">Pilic, who died on September 22 at the age of 86, also coached Boris Becker, Goran Ivanisevic, and Michael Stich.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DavisCup\/status\/1991156127770325279?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1991156127770325279%7Ctwgr%5E7d8384e7cacaff735b7c84ff4dd50f7c2079b0f7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https:\/\/www.mundodeportivo.com\/tenis\/20251119\/1002572075\/djokovic-bolonia-homenajear-niki-pilic.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">As a player, in addition to reaching the Roland Garros final in 1973, he was suspended for nine months by the Yugoslav Tennis Federation for refusing to play a Davis Cup tie against New Zealand in Zagreb.<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">The International Tennis Federation upheld the suspension but reduced it to one month, preventing Pilic from competing at the Italian and German Opens as well as during the opening week of Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p data-gtm-element-container=\"modulo-texto-link\" class=\"paragraph\">That suspension led to the creation of the Association of Tennis Professionals, which later joined forces with tournament directors in 1990 to form today\u2019s ATP Tour.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic, Boris Becker, and Ivan Ljubicic took part on Wednesday in Bologna, host city of the Davis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-293653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}