Delray dream run real estate professional Pecotic set to achieve dream by combining work with tennis, sets goal of playing 25 tournaments this year

Matija Pecotic did an incredible thing earlier this year at the Delray Beach Open where he achieved his best career result at the age of 33 and as a semi-professional.

Pecotic had not been playing tennis full-time anymore but accepted a qualifying wild card for the event. He is working full-time in a real-estate company but made his way through the qualifier and took down Jack Sock to reach the second round. The story created headlines around the world with even Novak Djokovic urging the Croatian to keep going.

Well, he is going to as he announced a goal of playing 25 tournaments this year starting at the Houston ATP 250 event next week where he got a qualifying draw wild card:

“I feel excited and pretty relaxed for now. I don’t know what my match is going to be like. I think it’s really cool that the tournament decided to give me a wild card. I’m not American, I’m not a junior, and I’m not signed with some agency. I emailed the tournament director a couple of days ago and they were kind of excited to hear from me. They said, ‘We followed your story in Delray’, and for them to give me the wild card, big respect to them. So that’s really cool, I really can’t wait to go there.”

His best rank came in 2015 when he was ranked 206th but perhaps now is the time for him to make it professionally. It wasn't something he decided to try without thinking about it:

“I took a couple of days [after Delray Beach] to put things into perspective and asked myself what I wanted to do. I said you know what, too many domino pieces came together for this to be just a giant coincidence. I was looking for a reason to come back to the game and compete again while I still can, and the sequence of events for everything to happen the way it did was like a sign from the tennis gods. The tennis gods have spoken and it’s time to listen, so I’m going to play.”

He also revealed that the company is behind him:

“The firm seems to be supportive, we certainly got a lot of exposure from Delray and people that I hadn’t spoken to, some of the guys at work, people were reaching out. I have a bit of flexibility and I have two supportive mentors who say I should go for it.”