Nikola Mektić (born 24 December 1988) is a Croatian professional tennis player. A doubles specialist, he has a career-high ATP doubles ranking of world No. 2, achieved on 17 May 2021.
Mektić has won 16 doubles titles on the ATP Tour, including six at Masters 1000 level with four different partners. Mektić also won the 2020 ATP Finals with Koolhof. In singles, he reached his highest ranking of world No. 213 in May 2013. Mektić was part of the Croatian team which won the 2018 Davis Cup, and won an Olympic gold medal at the 2020 Olympic Games alongside Pavić.
Mektić was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1988 to Mirko (father) and Višnja (mother). He began playing tennis at age 6 after his brother Luka took up the sport.
Career[]
After spending a better part of a decade on the ATP challenger tour and achieving a career high ranking of No. 213 in singles (on May 6, 2013),[2] in 2016 Mektić decided to focus on doubles.
The same year he reached his first ATP men's doubles final as a wildcard at the 2016 Croatia Open Umag with his compatriot Antonio Šančić. Since then, he has won sixteen ATP men's doubles titles, including one doubles Grand Slam title, six Masters 1000 titles, one mixed doubles Grand Slam and the 2020 ATP Finals.
2018-2019: First Grand Slam final, three Masters titles[]
In 2018 Mektic and Alexander Peya qualified for the 2018 ATP Finals in London. The same year Mektić reached his first Grand Slam finals (in mixed doubles) at the 2018 US Open, partnering Alicja Rosolska, and won the Davis Cup playing for Croatia. He also won three Masters 1000 with three different partners in Madrid (2018), Indian Wells (2019) and Monte Carlo (2019).
2020: ATP Finals doubles title, Australian Open mixed title, top 10 doubles ranking[]
2020 was the most successful year for Mektić in his career thus far. He won the 2020 ATP Finals in doubles partnering Wesley Koolhof and the 2020 Australian Open mixed doubles event partnering Barbora Krejčíková. He also reached the doubles final at the 2020 US Open partnering again with Wesley Koolhof. As a result he finished the year at No. 8 in the top 10 rankings in doubles and No. 3 in the doubles race with his partner Wesley Koolhof.
2021: New partnership, eight ATP titles, World No. 2 in doubles, historic Wimbledon title, Olympic champion[]
Starting 2021, Mektić partnered successfully with his compatriot Mate Pavić. They won four ATP titles including the doubles title at the 2021 Miami Open in the beginning of April[3] and reached the 2021 Australian Open doubles semifinals and 2021 Dubai Tennis Championships final in the first three months of the year. Following these results, Mektić returned to his No. 4 high-career ranking on April 5.
On April 18, Mektić clinched his fifth ATP Masters 1000 in a row and second Masters title of the year at the 2021 Monte-Carlo Masters where the pair defeated, for the second time in the final of a Masters in 2021, the British pair of Neal Skupski and Dan Evans.[4]
Seeded No. 2 the pair also reached the final at the 2021 Mutua Madrid Open Masters where they lost to the No. 3 seeded pair Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers[5] and the final of the Italian Open where they won the title defeating No. 5 seeded pair Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury. After the win, Mektić moved to his career-high ranking of World No. 2 on 17 May 2021.[6]
In their first Grand Slam doubles final, top seeds Mektić and Pavić had the biggest victory of their 2021 season as a team defeating Granollers and Zeballos to triumph in doubles at the 2021 Wimbledon Championships.
They became the first Croatian players to win the Wimbledon men’s doubles title. They are also the first players from their country to win at the All England Club since Goran Ivanisevic’s 2001 victory in singles and Ivan Dodig's 2019 mixed doubles win with Latisha Chan.[7]
At the Olympics he won the gold medal with Pavić in an all-Croatian final defeating Ivan Dodig and Marin Cilic.[8] It was the country’s first gold medal in the sport and the third time in the Olympics men's doubles' history that the same country won both gold and silver, and the first one since 1908.[9]
Croatia
(2020)
Wesley Koolhof
Bruno Soares
Marcel Granollers
Horacio Zeballos
Alicja Rosolska
Bethanie Mattek-Sands
Jamie Murray
Barbora Krejčíková
Jürgen Melzer
Édouard Roger-Vasselin
Martin Kližan
Juan Sebastián Cabal
Hsieh Cheng-peng
Christopher Rungkat
Vasek Pospisil
Kevin Krawietz
Horia Tecău
Ivan Bjelica
Ismar Gorčić
Attila Balázs
Denys Molchanov
Stefano Ianni
Michael Lammer
Olympic Tennis Champions in men's doubles
