I just saw Cliff Drysdale, Patrick McEnroe and Darren Cahill go through the men’s highlights on ESPN, and as a footnote to the tops seeds’ wins they mentioned that Amer Delic, a Bosnian-born American who played college tennis at the University of Illinois, won his second round match.  Delic, against No. 28 seed Paul Henri-Mathieu, came back from two sets down to win in five sets, closing out the fifth 9-7. Much of the print coverage of the match focused on the rowdy Bosnian fans supporting Delic, and previewing his next round with Serbian Novak Djokovic as a threat to bring out opposing Bosnians and Serbs. 

But Delic’s story is worth more time than that.  Delic, ranked 127 coming into the tournament, lost in the final round of the qualifyings last week and was packing his bags to come home.  As he wrote on his blog last week: “I was in the Anti-Doping room for post match testing, when I found there was a possible Lucky Loser spot. I never like to get my hopes up for anything, especially for something like this, when I have never ever gotten one in the past. I mean, your name gets pulled out of a hat. Nothing good really happens that way.

“Few hours passed before they actually went through the process. I was already on my way to dinner when I found out that my name was pulled and I was back in the draw!!! I though they were joking… thankfully, they were not.”

Delic also won his first round in five sets, so he’s got to be tired, and that is probably why he hasn’t updated his blog.  But it’s worth checking out amerdelic.com.

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