Davis Cup in Nis: Serbia Without Djokovic Against Lithuania
Kecmanovic and Medjedovic lead Viktor Troicki's team against Lithuania on September 19 and 20 in Cair, Serbia's second straight home Davis Cup tie in Nis. The draw is Friday, September 18.
Balls bounce off the hard court of the Cair hall, where Serbia’s Davis Cup team held its first training session on Tuesday, September 15, ahead of the tie against Lithuania. The same arena hosted a win over Turkey just a week earlier, and now, under the same roof, the team is preparing for a new test, this time against a team from the Baltics.
The World Group 1 Davis Cup match between Serbia and Lithuania is being played on September 19 and 20 in Nis’s Cair hall, and the winner advances to the qualifiers for the eight team Final Eight, scheduled for 2027. Head coach Viktor Troicki announced his squad on September 2, while the draw that will set the exact order of matches is scheduled for Friday, September 18, at noon, also in Nis.
Serbia’s second straight home tie in Cair
This tie could easily be mistaken for the moment Davis Cup returns to Nis after a long break, but that already happened, just a week earlier. The match against Turkey, played on September 12 and 13, was the one that brought Davis Cup back to Cair for the first time in seven years, and Serbia won it convincingly, 3-0. The tie against Lithuania is therefore the team’s second straight home match in this hall this season, not a comeback after a seven year wait, as it might seem.
Who is playing for Serbia
For the clash with Lithuania’s young and talented team, Troicki called up five players: Miomir Kecmanovic, who at number 64 in the ATP rankings and 27 years old is by far the most experienced player in the squad, Hamad Medjedovic (number 79, 23 years old), Ognjen Milic (345, 19), Branko Djuric (615, 21), and doubles specialist Stefan Latinovic, who is 103rd in the ATP doubles rankings and 26 years old. The team includes neither Novak Djokovic, nor Dusan Lajovic, nor Laslo Djere, so Serbia arrives in Nis with a considerably younger and more experimental lineup than the one it fielded against Turkey.
Sources differ on Djokovic’s current ranking. When the squad was announced on September 2, Serbia’s top player was listed as fifth in the world. After the ATP rankings released on September 14, his position dropped to 12th, so the fifth place figure, while accurate at the time, no longer matches his current ranking.
Lithuania is led by head coach Laurinas Grigelis, with Vilijus Gaubas, who is 121st in the ATP rankings, Edas Butvilas, Justas Trainauskas, Pijus Vaitikunas and Tadas Babelis rounding out the squad.
Day by day schedule
On the first day of competition, Saturday, September 19, two singles matches are scheduled from 2 p.m., under a format pairing each team’s first racket against the other’s second. The following day, Sunday, September 20, doubles goes first, followed by two more singles matches, with play starting an hour earlier, at 1 p.m.: first the top rackets face off, then the second rackets.
On paper Serbia enters as the favorite, with one player inside the world’s top seventy and two inside the top hundred, while Lithuania’s best ranked player starts at number 121. But precisely because the team is not led by a player with the experience of Djokovic, Lajovic or Djere, Kecmanovic and Medjedovic are carrying a burden they would usually share with more experienced teammates. The first real sign of how heavy that burden is will come Friday at noon, when the draw in Nis determines who faces whom on the opening day.
