Sydney’s Aleks Vukic has taken the path less travelled to play Open

From roadside corpses in Uzbekistan to a college degree in Illinois, Sydney’s Aleks Vukic has taken the road less travelled.

Sydneysider Aleks Vukic’s path to professional tennis took him to Spain and then the US college system. Picture: Paul Jeffers

Aleks Vukic is no stranger to the path less taken, so it didn’t surprise him that there was a hitch in his travel plans before his Australian Open debut at Melbourne Park next week.

The 24-year-old trained in Spain before completing a US college scholarship at the University of Illinois — the same place Tennis Australia boss Craig Tiley started his journey to the top.

He has spent the past couple of years travelling the world, from Middle America to the backblocks of Europe, doing the tennis tour hard yards as he built his ranking and resilience.

Some of those experiences are eye-opening. A 35-hour flight home from Uzbekistan passed more quickly than he imagined as he processed what he had seen on the way to the airport.

It is a story the 195th ranked Vukic still tells friends when they ask him what it is like to travel the world as a tennis player.

“We took a taxi at 1am in the morning to the airport, which was about six hours away,” he said.

“We started slowing down and there was a big queue and I was like, ‘What is going on at 4am in the morning? Why is there traffic?’.

“On the side of the road, there was a white towel, a white sheet, and I am looking at the driver asking, ‘is that person alive?’ And he is like, ‘Nup’. It was a bit of a shock.

“It was 4am in the morning and I was half-asleep and secondly, it was just so very casual with what was happening.

“I was heading back to Australia on like a 35-hour flight and I was thinking, ‘Get me home. Please. Quickly’.”

For a concerning period in January, finding a path to Melbourne felt trickier than negotiating corpses on the side of an Uzbeki highway.

The Sydneysider lived in a suburb identified as a COVID-19 hotspot, an issue that also tripped up his training partner Chris O’Connell this month.

It prompted some scrambling and an indirect route to Melbourne via Kiama, where the 24-year-old trained until he had satisfied entrance requirements to Victoria.

“There were a few of us who were stuck trying to get down here,” Vukic said. “Sydney was the most messed up because they divided Sydney so strangely. Some people could go to Melbourne or to Canberra to train and some people couldn’t go anywhere.

“It was a strange time, but I ended up getting in, and I am very happy to be here.”

There was a time where Vukic, who plays Yen-hsun Lu in an ATP Tour event on Monday, wondered if he would ever get the chance to actually play an Australian Open.

The right-hander was a junior peer of Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis but was some distance behind the pair when it came to performance and on-court maturity.

Vukic had the talent but, as a student of a selective school in Sydney, focused on his studies. A decision to pursue tennis properly did not come until he graduated.

The right-hander initially moved to Spain to train at an academy but the physical grind without intellectual stimulation did more damage than good.

“I was still very raw. That was the mindset behind that. I was very invested in school, so this was a different change where everything was about tennis, the five to six hours a day. It got to me,” he said.

The next option was to accept a college scholarship to the US. It suited the Australian, who secured a finance degree from the University of Illinois, where Tiley had coached before moving into tennis administration.

“It was unbelievable. Everyone says this about college, that it was the best and will be the best four years of my life,” Vukic said.

“I was training the same as I was in Spain, five to six hours a day, but I was going to class. It was a grind but it was so much fun.”

Vukic, who is managed by W Sports and Media, has built steadily over the past three seasons. He was ranked 558 in 2018 when he turned professional and is now in the top 200.

Before the tour shut down last March, he knocked off Bernard Tomic on the way to the final of a Challenger in Mexico. Encouragingly, he qualified for the French Open in October, which was his first major experience.

“It was an experience in Paris, but I think the whole year, with the guys I was playing and the opportunities, I had that year which proved to me, it was so close,” he said. “It gave me big confidence that I can compete with everyone and that is what I am going to try to do with the Australian Open.”