Olympic silver medalist Donna Vekic is adding 2018 WTA Coach of the Year Sascha Bajin to her team for 2025, she announced this week.
The World No.18 — who worked with fellow Croat Nikola Horvat and International Tennis Hall of Famer Pam Shriver in tandem during a resurgent last two years — teased the addition of a new coach to her team with a post to social media, where an individual was seen from the back feeding her balls on court. A subsequent post by Vekic revealed the coach to be Bajin.
Horvat had previously announced in late November that he and Vekic had mutually agreed to part ways for personal reasons.
“I am very happy that I had the opportunity to work with Donna in such an important period of her career and make a difference,” he wrote on his website. “Even though we have decided to part ways, I believe that Donna has many great tennis moments ahead of her, and I will always be proud of her success.”
A one-time teenage prodigy, the 28-year-old Vekic reached a career-high PIF WTA Rankings perch of No.18 this year, buoyed by a first-ever Grand Slam semifinal at Wimbledon — where she lost a record-breaking match to Jasmine Paolini. She also upset Coco Gauff, and saved a match point en route to beating Marta Kostyuk, on her way to the gold-medal match at the Olympics, where she finished runner-up to Zheng Qinwen. She nonetheless was the first-ever Croatian woman to reach the Olympic podium in tennis.
She also was runner-up to Diana Shnaider on grass in Bad Homburg, and reached the fourth round of the US Open.
Bajin, famously Serena Williams’ hitting partner for eight years, is best known for his work with Naomi Osaka from 2017-19, during which time Osaka won two Grand Slam titles and reached World No.1. Over the years, the Serbian-born German also worked with Victoria Azarenka, Sloane Stephens, and Caroline Wozniacki as a hitting partner, and Karolina Pliskova (in two stints), Kristina Mladenovic and Dayana Yastremska as head coach.
Last year, he had a brief spell with American Alycia Parks during the spring hard-court Sunshine Double in Indian Wells and Miami.