Maximus Pisani takes a Trip to Title Town

Amelia Island Plantation, L6 at the Omni Resort.

With The Southern Open at Bolles canceled this weekend, at the last second, Maximus entered into the USTA Level 6 tournament to get some good practice in on December 6, 2025.

Match practice is important, and part of ingredients in becoming the best tennis player you can be is to play matches, and matches in TOURNAMENTS!

In the first round, Maximus drew the always tough player and old friend, Jacob Kovalcik. Jacob plays on the FBHS highschool team at the #1 position. He has great hands and ALWAYS gets fired up to play against Maximus.

First rounds in tournaments are always tricky as you are getting use to getting into tournament mode, and getting use to the various conditions. In this case, the balls were a bit heavy due to the chilly wind, and it was played on clay...something that Maximus rarely trains on.

Max and I got a solid warmup in at our private court in Yulee before the match, so Max started off pretty solid and got used to the conditions to win 6-2, 6-2. Good start.

Second round was against one of Camden High Schools top players , Cannon Nethercott. Cannon was pretty solid, but Max was more experienced and played a bigger game than Cannon to win rather convincingly, 6-1, 6-0.

The final was a different story however. Max met with Jacksonville's up and coming juniors, Ulrich Novakovitch. Ulrich is a big strong player, with great technique and trains and plays daily like a pro. His Coach Vlad, was a hell of a player on the tour and has been developing Ulrich for some quite time now. Along with Ulrich's mom, they have both done a great job.

Max started off hot, and won the first set 6-2. However, Ulrich wasn't going away, and Max's legs started to give some. This was the first time that Max had played 6 sets of tennis in one day. With Max weighing in at about 187 pounds, and the way he uses his legs on his serve, after a while the legs become TOASTY!

Max broke early, but then Ulrich broke back, There must have been 5 breaks of serves in a row. Max had many chances to shut down the second set, but didn't play the "big" points well. And at the end of the day, THAT is exactly what the best players do. They play the BIG points VERY well.

So after almost 2 hours in the chilly wind, Max closed it out to prevail 6-2, 7-5. Well done Maximus!

This will surely move him up in the USTA rankings and allow him to maybe play some higher level junior tournaments in the upcoming future.