Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open ©Belga
Novak Djokovic is on the verge of extinguishing the statistical debate after his 22nd Grand Slam title in Australia, a record equaled, but many will still refuse to see him as the greatest tennis player of all time, because of the accumulation the controversies it arouses.
It was his father, and not him directly, who was the protagonist of the latest, in Melbourne Park, where Srdjan Djokovic was seen posing with a man carrying a Russian flag bearing the image of Vladimir Putin, in full war against Ukraine.
A disservice rendered to his son, who would have liked to win back the hearts of Australians, a year after the incredible episode of his expulsion from the country for lack of vaccination against Covid.
The list of misadventures, missteps, misunderstood attitudes has become too long for the champion to hope to one day come close to Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in popularity, outside Serbia and the Balkans where he is sanctified.
The Kula Tower illuminated for Novak Djokovic in Belgrade 🇷🇸
(🎥 @ozmo_sasa) pic.twitter.com/DE0wxpnj4T
— We Are Tennis France (@WeAreTennisFR) January 31, 2023
“I also play against the stadium”
“These things seem to stack! It’s been part of my life, unfortunately, in recent years. I try to be more resistant, stronger. I manage to disconnect. I want to keep my mind as healthy and calm as possible to keep the energy I need on the court“, explained Djokovic after the semi-final in Melbourne.
In principle, this married man and father of two children has everything to be an idol: affable, respectful, available, funny, patriotic but open to the world, intelligent, cultured, polyglot… And yet.
During his career, he happened to be booed by a minority of spectators. Too mechanical? Too predictable? Too defensive? A bit of an actor? A little arrogant? Maybe just too strong.
«The fact is that 90% of the time, if not more, I play against my opponent and also against the stadium. I’m used to it, but I’m human, I have emotions, and sometimes I get annoyed when provoked.”he once said at Wimbledon.
Efforts without return
The champion has nevertheless taken pains to reverse this trend, for example by sending signs of gratitude to the four stands after each of his victories or by addressing the local public in his language (in particular in French, Italian, in German and excellent English).
The support received in the final of the US Open 2021 where, after winning the Australian Open, Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, he lost to Daniil Medvedev in a match of the ultimate exploit of the tennis, the Grand Slam, could have marked the long-awaited turning point.
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But this moment of grace with the public was very fleeting. A few weeks later, he was caught up in the controversy when the question of compulsory vaccination to enter Australia came up again and he only opposed a silence that was first mysterious, then annoying.
Several times he scuttled his efforts with unfortunate initiatives, such as the organization of a tour in the former Yugoslavia in the midst of a pandemic which turned into an epidemic center.
There was also his disqualification in the round of 16 of the US Open 2020 for having, involuntarily, touched a line judge with a ball in a gesture of anger. Or racket throws, at the 2016 Masters and elsewhere.
Bombings in the firmament
If he failed to win hearts, his harvest of titles, in progress at 35, has fulfilled his ambitions, which have always been high: at seven he declared on Serbian television that he wanted to become world No.1.
Djokovic has won 22 Grand Slam titles (like Nadal), 93 tournaments on the ATP circuit, including 38 Masters 1000 (record) and six Masters (shared record with Federer). Monday he will start his 374th week at the first world rank (record).
Its financial gains are of course at the height of these successes with more than 165 million dollars amassed only in “prize money” (the prizes distributed by the tournaments), without counting advertising and other revenues. A happy fate that was not guaranteed to him by birth.
Because Djokovic, born in Belgrade on May 22, 1987, did not grow up in a cocoon. At the age of 12, to escape the NATO bombardments during the war in the Balkans, he spent two and a half months, his nights in air-raid shelters and his days… on a tennis court, because the school was closed.
Then his family, who ran a pizzeria in a small ski resort, made great financial efforts to send the prodigy to a tennis school for three years in Germany, before he turned professional in 2003.
The recipe for his sporting success is a mixture of obvious ingredients such as talent and hard work, more sought-after components (gluten-free diet for resistance, yoga for flexibility and mental relaxation) and other more or less strange ones: an oxygen chamber for recovery, a guru for the mind, visits to a mysterious “pyramid” in Bosnia for “energy”… So much grain to grind for his adversaries.
