Jelena Genčić (,čić ; 9 October 1936 – 1 June 2013) was a Serbian tennis and handball player and coach.
In the 1970s she became a junior tennis coach and was later credited for playing a major role in the early development of numerous future top class professional players and Grand Slam champions. Among the players she discovered and coached are Monica Seles, Novak Djokovic, Goran Ivanišević, Mima Jaušovec, Iva Majoli, and Tatjana Ječmenica. Genčić-coached players went on to collect 36 Grand Slam single titles: Djokovic 24, Seles 9, Ivanišević 1, Jaušovec 1, and Majoli 1.
Early life and education
Born as one of seven children to Serbian father Jovan and Austrian mother Hermina, Jelena came from the prominent Genčić family in Serbia. Her grandfather Lazar Genčić studied medicine in Vienna, becoming one of Serbia's first surgeons in addition to setting up and running a military hospital while simultaneously holding the rank of a Royal Serbian Army general in World War I's Serbian campaign. Her great uncle Đorđe Genčić was the interior minister in the cabinet of Nikola Pašić and one of the chief conspirators of the May Coup.
She graduated with a degree in art history from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy. She later obtained a second degree in psychology.
Career
Sports
Genčić was a handball and tennis player, playing the two sports in parallel. She began pursuing tennis in 1948 at the age of eleven in the Fifth Mixed Experimental High School in Senjak. Before becoming the goalkeeper of the school's handball team, she tried to play football with the boys, but they often forced her to play in goal, and it was there that she discovered her goalkeeping potential. Genčić was soon invited to play the goalkeeper position at ŽRK Crvena zvezda, which she did in both outdoor and indoor versions of the sport. However, Jelena simultaneously played tennis for the rival club Partizan, which she joined in 1954. She equally invested herself in both sports and achieved success for both clubs.
Playing both sports simultaneously was sometimes a tough challenge; on one occasion in 1950, she was the goalkeeper in a friendly handball match with Austria in Graz, and the very next day the French Open started, so she took the train from Vienna to Paris by herself despite still being aged 13 at the time. In 1954, the 17-year-old competed at the Wimbledon in girls' singles, but lost in the first round due to having no experience playing on grass.
Meanwhile, in handball, Genčić became the goalkeeper of the Yugoslav women's national team, representing the country at the 1956 World Outdoor Handball Championship in West Germany and winning bronze at the inaugural 1957 World Championships held at home in Belgrade.
In 1963, at the age of 27, she quit handball, devoting herself fully to tennis. In addition to being a member of the Partizan tennis club, Genčić competed at various tournaments around the globe. At one time, she defined her tennis game as sharp and offensive, and she liked to make people "jump out of their seats" with it. Genčić played for Partizan from 1954 to 1976 and was the champion of Yugoslavia 20 times: two times in singles, in 1958 and 1964, six times in women's pairs, and twelve times in mixed pairs, while she was second 11 times. She played four Fed Cup matches for Yugoslavia in 1973.
Genčić's hobby was taking photos and in 1975 she had an exhibition of portraits of tennis players during the game.
Media
Genčić worked as television director at the state-owned television network TV Belgrade. Her work on television rarely overlapped with sports as she was mostly involved with producing arts-and-culture programmes dealing with the history of art in Serbia, classical music, and theater.
Genčić is especially proud of the series of shows on Serbian medieval miniature painting, because no one had done it before. She worked with the best TV directors, such as Minjo Dedić, Savo Mrmko, Slavo Ravasi, and Zdravko Šotra. Genčić retired as a director at the end of the 1990s.
Tennis administration and coaching
In 1968, as tennis went professional with the beginning of its Open era, the 31-year-old Genčić, still very much an active player, began to be groomed for an eventual full-time tennis administrative career with a board position given to her at TK Partizan. Throughout the next few years, she became the president of the club and was effectively captain of the Yugoslav Tennis Association's juniors (TSJJ), and therefore traveled with the country's best youngsters.