It was evening in late August and the red clay courts at the Novak Tennis Center in Belgrade had already been lit. A Head backpack rested on court eleven’s changeover bench with a handwritten message in Cyrillic squeezed on the white-polyester frame:
“For Mihailo, from Novak. I love your big smile. Happy Birthday.”
Eight-year-old Mihailo Topic had just won the first set of a sparring match against a boy at least a head-and-a-half taller than him, two years his senior. The score was 6-1.
He walked towards the bench, and in a routine that mimicked the pros, took a few sips of pale-orange liquid from a non-labeled plastic bottle and then another gulp of water from a larger bottle.