STARKVILLE — Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez are both similar and different.
On the court, the two Mississippi State juniors, who currently form the No. 1 ranked doubles pairing in men’s college tennis, have largely the same skill set. Both are strong, powerful servers who are also excellent on returns, and both are at their best on the baseline rather than up at the net.
Pairing two players who play the game in a similar way may seem unorthodox, but it is the mental side of tennis where Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez differ. Jovanovic plays mostly on feel and does not always put a lot of thought into his shots, while Sanchez Martinez is much more analytical and thinks a lot about his game.
“Both of us have a good serve, so it’s hard for opponents to break us,” Sanchez Martinez said. “My game on net might not be the best, but I can trust my doubles partner in the back, that I know he’s going to take care of the ball that’s coming to him, which makes it harder for the opponents to hit a hard ball at me. So I can have it easier there. Same with the returns. Both of us return well, which (makes it) hard for the opponents to hold their serves, too.”
From Europe to Starkville
Like many college tennis rosters, the Bulldogs have a heavy international presence — eight of their 10 players this season are European, with just two Americans. Jovanovic, from Podgorica, Montenegro, and Sanchez Martinez, from Potsdam, Germany, have continued the long pipeline of European players coming to develop their games at U.S. colleges.
Basketball and soccer are by far the most popular sports in Montenegro, but Jovanovic, who played just about everything when he was little, quickly found tennis to be his best sport, so he stuck with it. Bulldogs head coach Matt Roberts and assistant coach Jake Jacoby first noticed Jovanovic when he lost a close match at age 17 to Carles Hernandez, who graduated from MSU last year, and from there the coaches recruited him hard and secured his commitment.
“I chose Mississippi State mainly because of the coaches,” Jovanovic said. “I knew some guys who went here a few years ago. All the people who went here told me really good things about (Roberts), about (Jacoby). Those two personalities of coaches are the kind I need.”
Tennis is more popular in Germany — even Dirk Nowitzki nearly chose tennis over basketball — and Sanchez Martinez’s father knew a coach in Potsdam from job and sent him to a camp at a young age. Sanchez Martinez initially turned pro as a teenager but maintained full college eligibility because he was competing for the German tennis federation and had made relatively little money on tour.
Now 23, Sanchez Martinez only played tennis growing up and first came to MSU at age 20, making him considerably older than a typical college junior.
“Jake has always been recruiting me since I was 17, 18, and he told me things that I was looking for,” Sanchez Martinez said. “He’s a person who believes in me and actually cares about me. Coming here was the right move because they actually care about the player and the team in general.”
If at first you don’t succeed…
Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez instantly became close friends when they arrived together in Starkville, so Roberts felt it was only natural to pair them together in doubles. But their first experience as a doubles team, when they were both freshmen, did not go well.
At the SEC-Big 12 Challenge in November 2022, hosted by Alabama, Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez lost two of their three matches, with the only win coming in a tiebreak. After that, they were not paired up once for the entire spring season, but with a new roster the next fall, the coaching staff decided to give them another try.
Sanchez Martinez is left-handed, but both players have excellent backhand returns, so Roberts flipped their positioning, putting Jovanovic on the “deuce” side and Sanchez Martinez on the “ad” side to give them both more opportunities to whip out their backhands.
“Very quickly, they learned so many basic things in doubles and how they could complement each other,” Roberts said. “Then they learned how to play a lot of I-formation and set each other up at the net. And then from there, they just got better and better.”
By the spring of their sophomore year, they had become MSU’s No. 1 doubles team and went 8-2 together in Southeastern Conference play. They then reached the quarterfinals at the NCAA Championships in Stillwater, Oklahoma, earning All-American honors.
“We just do a lot of drills teaching the guys how to move forward and how to trust their volleys,” Roberts said. “It’s four drills that teach guys how to serve and return under pressure, clean up at the net, and how to transition with their partner and set each other up. Even though those two guys prefer their ground strokes, they have learned how to volley at a pretty high level when they need to put pressure on their opponents.”
Finding another gear
Coming off their breakout sophomore season, Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez had an outstanding fall as juniors. They became All-Americans again by advancing to the NCAA quarterfinals in November before losing to the eventual champions from TCU. Jovanovic also entered the fall ranked No. 12 individually in singles, though Sanchez Martinez has taken over the No. 1 position in the spring.
In the dual season, Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez are carrying an 18-1 record into the NCAA Tournament, including a perfect 12-0 mark in SEC play. Their only loss came in a tiebreak against North Carolina State. And they have both been strong in singles as well — Sanchez Martinez is 19-3 overall including 14-2 at the No. 1 spot, while Jovanovic was 9-5 in conference play, including 8-3 after moving down to No. 2.
“They’re very coachable,” Roberts said. “If I see something, I can communicate to them in the middle of a match, and they’re very receptive (and) responsive to what I say, and then they apply it very well. I’ve never had a doubles team that I can jump in and out in the middle of the match and tell them things that I see without distracting them. They’re very good at listening to me and working together.”
With Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez leading the way, the Bulldogs won the doubles point in every SEC match except the regular-season finale at Alabama. MSU is ranked No. 12 in the country as a team, putting it in good shape to once again host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
Once there, the Bulldogs will go as far as their top doubles team takes them — and Jovanovic believes the duo is still yet to hit its ceiling.
“Even though we’re doing well now and we’re winning a lot of matches, I feel like there is still a lot of room for improvement,” Jovanovic said. “There are a lot of things we can still keep working on. Both of us are really excited to see what’s coming and what is our limit, because I don’t think we’re even close to it right now.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
