Ivan Ljubicic has been appointed by the French Tennis Federation as director of the “Ambition 2024” program to help improve French tennis.
The former coach will be responsible for supervising and improving the quality of the over 14 national players.
Ljubicic will work closely with Nicolas Escude, Paul Henri Mathieu and Pauline Parmentier in the new role, which starts on 15 January 2023.
Ljubicic will start a three-month trip to France to assess the situation of French tennis.
The main goal of the “Ambition 2024” Programme has been created to ensure that French tennis produces better player in larger numbers ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024. Only this year’s WTA Finals champion Caroline Garcia features in the top 30 in the ATP and WTA Tour Rankings. The top male player in French tennis is Arthur Rinderknech, who is ranked world number 44. The few emerging stars are Luca Van Assche, who was the first player born in 2004 to win the Challenger title in Maia and joined the top 150 in the ATP Ranking, Arthur Fils, who played in the main draw of the Masters 1000 tournament in Paris Bercy but lost to Fabio Fognini in three sets, and Gabriel Debru, who won the Roland Garros Junior title.
Ivan Ljubicic: “I am very happy to join the French Tennis Federation, one of the federations in the world that devotes the resources to developing the potential of young people. France has a very rich, very promising breeding ground, and I put my experience at the service of this new challenge with total commitment and a strong desire to share the values that forge champions”.
French tennis President Gilles Moretton believes that young French tennis players will benefit from Ljubicic’s winning mentality.
Gilles Moretton: “His approach to tennis, focused on performance, at all times, and down to the smallest detail, is driven by this culture of winning that we want to instil in our French hopefuls. All this without ever turning away from the essential human values that the Federation shares.
