Treading his own path, Viktor Durasovic left home at 14 to train in Barcelona, where he lives with his coach’s parents.
Leaving home to train at an academy overseas has become a normal, albeit difficult, choice for many talented young tennis players. Not in Norway though. Football, biathlon and cross-country skiing are far more obvious sports for young Norwegians to be involved in, safe in the knowledge that many of their countrymen have flourished before at the highest level.
For Durasovic it was the excitement of going where very few Norwegians have gone before that offered sufficient motivation to leave his family and friends and pursue a career as a professional tennis player.
Learning to play tennis with his father in a small sports hall not big enough for a full-size tennis court but with enough space to put up a net and hit against a wall, Durasovic was gripped from the age of four. That regime continued until he was 11, when he moved to play more seriously in Oslo.
Three years later, when his coach Bruno Alcala decided the weather in Norway was too cold and he was going to move to Spain, Durasovic had a difficult decision to make. Either he stayed in Norway knowing there would be few opportunities to make it as a professional, driven mainly by the dearth of top players to practise with, or he left his family and friends and went to Spain with Alcala. He chose the latter.
Now 18, Durasovic seems to have made the right choice. This week he made it as far as the third round of the Junior event at Wimbledon, before losing in three sets to Korea's Yungseong Chung.
“It is really, really difficult to become good if you stay in Norway,” he says. "The reason why tennis in Norway is not so good is that there isn’t much of a tennis culture and there are not enough players.
“Aside from me, there is almost nobody else trying to become a professional player. Casper [Ruud] is a year younger than me, and he’s been trying some Futures, and I’m sure he will pick it up soon. In the future I guess it will be just me and him.”
Durasovic is certainly not alone, with 16-year-old Ruud attempting to emulate his father Christian, who reached a career high of No.39 in the world. However, with Ruud having gone out in the first round this week, and not yet holding an ATP ranking, Durasovic is the primary Norwegian hope.
When he isn’t travelling to tournaments, Durasovic trains at Albert Ramos’ academy on the Spanish coast and lives with Alcala’s parents in Barcelona, a set up that appears to suit both coach and pupil. “It’s good. I like staying there and they take good care of me. I get along really well with them,” says Durasovic.
“We spend a lot of time together: eight to 10 hours a day,” adds Alcala. “So, for his own sake and for mine, it is good that he goes with my parents.”
Although the teenager is happy, he only sees his real family for one or two weeks a year. Fortunately the sacrifice appears to be paying off, as he holds a ranking of 477.
Alcala says that as well as his dedication on the court, it is the teenager’s mental attitude that is particularly impressive.
“[Viktor] sees life the other way to many children. Most children think you have your childhood to have fun and responsibilities come later,” he says. “He sees more that if he invests his time now he will have a better life later. On that side, he is very mature. It means that he already understands something that many others don’t.”
“For me the impressive thing [about Viktor] is that he leads his generation, he is a role model. It is difficult to be so determined in your mind about what you want without having your own role model in your country.”
The lack of other Norwegian players does not seem to faze Durasovic, who says he enjoys playing tournaments so he can spend time with other people his age.
“Of course it would be nice if there could be more players from Norway coming up but it doesn’t matter much [to me] because I know other people in the same position,” he says. “I have got Casper and I see him in the Grand Slams and a few other tournaments, so it’s fine.”
For Norway it is big news to have two players at Wimbledon. Alcala’s phone has been ringing non-stop with calls from the Norwegian press. Winter sports athletes are rife within Norway, but finally they have a tennis player who is determined to go even further than Christian Ruud did.
“My goal is to be No.1, to be the best. I do believe it’s possible, with hard work.”