New Flag and, She Hopes, Fortunes

Croat Ajla Tomljanovic Switches to Representing Australia

While most players ignore their introduction by the chair umpire, one player at the United States Open recently paused to listen to hers.

On Tuesday the umpire on Court 6 said, “To the right of the chair, from Australia, Ajla Tomljanovic.”

“It was the first time I actually heard it and paid attention to when they say your name,” Tomljanovic said. “I kind of laughed to myself a little bit because it felt good.”

The reason for the excitement was her country. Tomljanovic, 21, was born in Croatia and moved to Florida for training when she was 13. This week she is playing her first tournament representing Australia, a country in which she has never lived but recently became a resident. She lost, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, to 15th-seeded Carla Suárez Navarro on Tuesday, but she remains in the women’s doubles draw with Jarmila Gajdosova, a new countrywoman.

Unlike Grand Slam events, WTA Tour events require citizenship to represent a country, so the next time Tomljanovic plays as an Australian will probably be at the Australian Open in January. She plans to move to Brisbane in the off-season and has rented an apartment there, though she has not seen it in person.

Tomljanovic said she made the residency change because she saw an opportunity to take her game to the next level by moving to Australia. It was similar to her decision to relocate to the United States several years ago for better training conditions. “It kind of all happened so fast and instantaneously,” she said.

Tomljanovic has been groomed for stardom for nearly a decade. She signed with the agency I.M.G. when she was 12 and is one of only five players represented by the leading agent Max Eisenbud. The others are the Grand Slam champions Maria Sharapova and Li Na and the rising stars Madison Keys and Laura Robson.

Tomljanovic’s rise was stalled by mononucleosis in 2012. Since regaining her health before the 2013 season, Tomljanovic’s ranking has risen from 493rd to 55th. She had her best Grand Slam result at the French Open this spring, beating the No. 3 seed, Agnieszka Radwanska, to reach the fourth round. She was the highest-ranked player in a group of young Croatians expected to make the country a force in women’s tennis for the next decade.

Last fall, Eisenbud brought in the Australian coach Dave Taylor to work with Tomljanovic at her base at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla.

“My first thoughts on her tennis were that I was a bit surprised she hadn’t done better,” said Taylor, who was Samantha Stosur’s coach when she won the 2011 United States Open title, the only Grand Slam singles championship for an Australian man or women since 2002. “To me, her big weapons were there, and the weaknesses weren’t so weak.”

Taylor would appear to be the obvious bridge to Australia for Tomljanovic, but he said he was not instrumental in her move.

“Everyone thinks I initiated it — no,” he said. “They definitely spoke to me about what I thought of it, but it was a family decision.”

Tomljanovic and Eisenbud said that she never tried to shop herself to other countries and that she never considered representing the United States. They said the idea to represent Australia started as a joke by Tomljanovic about how to sustain a team that included Taylor. But the idea that Tennis Australia provided support that could enhance her play eventually turned serious.

“If these girls want to compete with the top-10 girls that have the coach and the physio and the massage — you need to put that type of team around you,” Eisenbud said. “That’s what I have with Maria and Li Na, and I see what it takes, and that’s what I’m trying to put around Ajla.”

Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia and the tournament director of the Australian Open, said in an email that Tomljanovic’s choice to represent Australia was “entirely her idea and decision,” and that she would receive the same treatment as any other Australian player.

Although she is Australia’s newest tennis arrival, Tomljanovic is hardly a trailblazer. Six of the 12 players representing Australia at the United States Open were not born there. Some immigrated as children, like Bernard Tomic, who was born in Germany to Croatian parents. Others, like the Russian-born Anastasia Rodionova, moved in the middle of their careers. Gajdosova, Tomljanovic’s doubles partner, was born in Slovakia and became an Australian citizen in 2009.

Daria Gavrilova, a Russian formerly ranked No. 1 at the junior level, also made her debut under the Australian flag at this year’s Open, losing in the second round of qualifying.

The flow of top players to Australia is similar to the rush to Kazakhstan, which offers training resources and monetary incentives to players — mostly Russians — who agree to become citizens. Only one of the five singles players at the Open representing Kazakhstan was born there.

Tiley said the comparisons between the Kazakh model and the Australian influx were unfair.

“Australia is a great place to live and many people make the decision to come here for the lifestyle and opportunity,” he said. “Tennis Australia is not in the business of discriminating against newcomers to our country, nor do we recruit or pay people to come live here.”

Excited by the change, Tomljanovic was wary of a possible backlash from her homeland.

“I’m Croatian, obviously — no one is ever going to take that away,” she said. “I was born there, my parents are from there.”

With Tomljanovic gone, Donna Vekic, ranked 79th, is now the highest-ranked woman representing Croatia. Vekic, 18, used to train in London and frequently heard suggestions that she should represent Britain.

Vekic said that she wanted to stay Croatian, but that she supported Tomljanovic’s decision. “We have now Ajla switching to become Australian — which is a bit odd — but everyone has their own career, and everyone makes their own choices,” she said, adding, “If she thinks it’s going to help her in life, of course, go for it.”

By spending more time with Australians, especially her coach, Tomljanovic is slowly picking up on the ways of her new country.

“Sometimes he’d say ‘bloke,’ and I’d say, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” she said. “It’s fun. I use ‘mate’ more, too.”

She is not sure, however, whether her American-tinged accent will be replaced by an Australian inflection.

“I don’t want it to be forced,” she said. “But since I’m going to spend a lot more time there, maybe I’ll develop it. If it happens, I want it to be natural.”