Tennis star Ajla Tomljanovic reveals post-tennis career ambitions
After overcoming the injury that prevented her from playing in the 2023 Australian Open, Aussie hero Ajla Tomljanovic is looking forward to a busy year ahead and returning to Melbourne Park. But she’s also looking ahead.
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Ajla Tomljanovic is all over the romance between Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce.
Australia’s best female tennis player is inquisitive – she would love to have her own TV talk show post-tennis – and one of her favourite topics at the moment is the world’s biggest pop star.
“I just love talking to people, learning about their life and going deep into some topics,” Tomljanovic explains.
“Right now I’m into the whole Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift thing. I just hope they stay together. I think this could be it – I’m gonna call it, I think they will get engaged and at least get married. This is the first guy who has been openly proud to be her boyfriend ... I’m probably way too invested in this.”
But she’s not finished, pointing out how Kelce flew to Buenos Aires to attend one of Swift’s concerts last month when his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, had a bye.
“Obviously he has the financial means to do it, but he’s showing that nothing is impossible; he is setting the standard (for romantics). I know the financial part is big but still the commitment is there.”
Tomljanovic knows a thing or two about love in the spotlight. She once dated Nick Kyrgios and then her most recent high-profile romance with fellow tennis player, Italian Matteo Berrettini, was captured on the Netflix documentary series Break Point.
In fact the final stages of the three-year romance were played out in front of the cameras at the 2022 Australian Open, before they officially split a month later.
Interestingly, she went on to have the best year of her career with her every move being captured, highlighted by victory over the game’s greatest player Serena Williams in her final ever match, at the US Open. The timing was fortuitous for Australian tennis given Ash Barty, the three-time Grand Slam winner and world No.1, had retired in March.
Having a ready-made replacement able to fly the flag on the world stage was a godsend and in the lead-up to the 2023 Australian Open, Tomljanovic was our next Aussie hero.
She never made it to Melbourne Park. What started as sharp pain in her knee during a training session on the eve of the tournament turned into 10 months on the sidelines.
But thankfully, a month out from the 2024 Open – which starts on January 14 – Tomljanovic, 30, is back to take care of some unfinished business.
“I always try to bring perspective back to my life and be like, ‘Look, you’re an athlete, this happens, you’re pounding your knee for 30 years, what do you expect?’,” Tomljanovic says.
“Yeah, the timing could have been better but I’m trying not to think about it. I think what gets me through is that I truly believe my best is still to come, which, I mean, that’s the biggest motivator, right?”
The Tomljanovic road to being “Aussie Ajla” started in Zagreb, Croatia. Her father, Ratko, was a professional handball player and the captain of the national Croatian team. She remembers watching her mother, Emina, playing tennis with friends and her older sister, Hana, having lessons.
Ajla first picked up a racquet at six and was obsessed. She didn’t like team sports, preferring to fight her own battles on the tennis court and at age 12 was signed by IMG Tennis and relocated to South Florida to attend an elite training facility co-founded by tennis great Chris Evert, who today remains a mentor and friend.
The Australian connection came via a cousin who lived in Queensland. It grew after Tomljanovic won the Australian Open junior doubles title in 2009 and then five years later she began representing her new country after Tennis Australia came to the party with support. In 2018 she was granted citizenship.
While she has never lived in Australia for any length of time and there is no Aussie twang in her American-Slavic accent, her love for her adopted homeland is strong.
She credits fellow Croatian Jelena Dokic, another adopted Aussie tennis player, with helping her dream green and gold.
“I have always resonated with the country and when I won my first junior grand slam doubles here, I fell in love with everything about it. My tennis core memory is there,” she says.
“And when I watched Jelena Dokic play in the quarter-finals (at the 2009 Australian Open), I was like ‘Oh my God, I want to be here one day’, so all my little island memories are from here. It feels special.”
Asked where home is, Tomljanovic breaks into a laugh. Her official residence is Boca Raton in Florida but she’s also just bought an apartment in Miami which is where her parents live, while there are family connections still in Croatia and the Gold Coast.
“I don’t know where home is,” she says. “I just know that wherever I am I have my people with me everywhere, but on the tennis court home is definitely in Australia, no doubt.”
Finding peace on the tennis court has been another issue.
Tomljanovic speaks openly about how she was overcome by nerves early in her career, which would overwhelm her on court. But she never told anyone about the issue. She was too scared to reveal the vulnerability but after seeking professional help, now has processes in place which allow her to communicate her feelings.
This new-found sense of belonging was on show for the world to see in that famous third-round match at the 2022 US Open.
In what would become ESPN’s most watched match in the network’s 43-year history (peaking at 6.9 million viewers), Tomljanovic played the perfect match.
From the opening serve she was in the zone as a stunned New York crowd watched the Australian go toe-to-toe with the GOAT.
After three hours and six match points, there was silence in Arthur Ashe Stadium when Serena Williams sent the ball crashing into the net. It was over, and an apologetic Tomljanovic later described the victory over her idol as “bittersweet”.
“People always connect me to that match and that’s totally OK,” Tomljanovic says. “But I feel as tennis players we have such a short memory. Yeah it was a great thing, but we’re always onto the next thing, the next match.
“It’s definitely something that when I go back and really think about it, it’s amazing but you know if someone doesn’t bring it up, I never think about it.”
It wasn’t just on the court where her star was on the rise. Tomljanovic was capturing the eye in the glossy magazines with Vogue fashion shoots and wearing Dolce & Gabbana at the Met Gala in New York.
“I’m not a model,” she laughs. “To me if I can merge fashion and tennis, I love that but I don’t see myself doing that after tennis.”
Sponsors have come on board including coconut water giant Cocobella and Champagne house Piper-Heidsieck who named her as their Australian Open ambassador. During her injury lay-off this year, Tomljanovic travelled to the company’s base in Reims, France, where she saw first-hand the process from grapes to bubbles.
Apart from having one of the world’s youngest chief winemakers, Emilien Boutillat, Piper-Heidsieck is also the world’s first B-Corp certified Champagne House, embracing a sustainable and modern approach to the old art of champagne making.
“It was amazing and the thing that blew my mind the most is that there’s no robotics or mechanics involved,” Tomljanovic explains. “The people hand-pick the grapes they think are good, then they put them in this big well and then slowly lower the top to squish it and it goes to all these little drains that separate the seeds and the skin.
“And the chief wine expert then has to taste every batch, how’s the pressure on him?
“They told me it takes two years to make one bottle which I’ll drink in 20 minutes with my friends. There is so much hard work that goes into it and with Piper, sustainability is their guiding principle.
Tomljanovic will again be the face of the brand in January at Melbourne Park although she’s hoping the PR responsibilities will be limited because of her on-court commitments.
Her left knee, which she had surgery on earlier in the year, is completely healed and while she is a long way off her career-best ranking of 32, there are positive signs in her comeback, including victory in a WTA125 event in Brazil last month.
“I feel like for so many months after surgery I’ve been focused on needing to get my knee pain free so you’re locked into that,” she says. “And then once you get healthy enough to compete, you’re like, ‘Oh, well now I need to figure out how to play again’.
“So it feels like you get over a hill and there’s another mountain waiting on the other side. But it’s OK, this is now kind of the fun part, figuring out how to get back to your old self and hopefully better.”
The Australian Open hasn’t been her friend. She hasn’t got past the second round in eight attempts.
“I’ve screwed it up a few times,” she declares. “I actually still have the best memories there, even the matches I’ve lost just with the atmosphere and the support I feel.
“It has been a little bit of my kryptonite but I still love it. I don’t want to jinx myself or anything but I feel like I’m due for a good January.”
When it’s pointed out it could be an even better February if she hung around for the start of Taylor Swift’s Australian tour in Melbourne, Tomljanovic grimaces in pain.
“Can you believe I’ve never seen her yet,” she says. “If I could carve out a date right now I’d do it but I have this job that keeps me pretty busy.”
The job of being Australia’s next tennis star.
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