by Chris Bowers
Pilic’s wider contacts in the tennis world meant others got to see the promising Serbian boy. One was Ivan Ljubicic, the cerebral Croatian player who worked with Pilic when Pilic became Croatia’s Davis Cup captain. ‘Nikki is unbelievable in reading the potential of players,’ Ljubicic says, ‘and he said he was definitely going to be top class. He was mentally ready for it from the beginning.’
It wasn’t until July 2001 that Pilic began to be seriously impressed. Just two months after his 14th birthday, Djokovic won the 14 & Under singles and doubles titles at the European Junior Championships. That was when Pilic first got the sense that the lad Gencic had sent to him might be a world-beater. ‘I could see he was already playing at a very high level – he needed to improve his serve and use his volleys more but from the back he was very strong. I used to hit with him myself, I knew how good he was from his reactions, from how he sees the ball, how he reacted to drop shots – you can see all those things. He was very coachable, a good worker and had in his head where he wanted to go. He was very professional in all respects.’
Djokovic was based at the Pilic academy for almost four years – two years part time, two years full time. Gencic’s assessment that Novak should never be too far from his family meant he often returned to Belgrade, even if it put a further strain on the family’s fragile finances. ‘When Novak came back to Belgrade,’ Gencic said, ‘we’d work at Partizan, or he’d play some matches at Gemax and then, after three or four days, I’d ask him whether he felt able to go back to Belgrade and he’d generally say yes.’ The trips back to Belgrade allowed him to catch up with his school friends, many of whom remain his friends today, as they offer him an escape from the tennis world.
One of his closest tennis friends during his early teens was Bojan Bozovic. ‘We became best friends because we spent the whole time together,’ says Bozovic from his home in Zurich, where he now runs a tennis academy but remains in regular contact with Djokovic. The two boys were not just friends but also doubles partners, winning the European doubles gold medal at under-14 and under-16 level. So what was Djokovic like as an early teenager? Bozovic says,
I could see that his only wish was to be No. 1 and he sacrificed everything for that goal. He didn’t want to do anything else, only to be the best. You could see that he only had tennis on his mind. He had one goal and everything he did was directed at achieving that goal. I remember when he won the singles at the European Championships, we were given 10 days off afterwards but he was still going to bed at 9.30 or 10 o’clock. Everyone else went for a walk or went for an ice cream but Novak went to bed no later than 10 because he didn’t want to lose the rhythm. At 14 he was practising six hours a day. He had no time for other stuff, although he did like football and skiing. He hasn’t really changed from then to now; he’s stayed the same. He always had great charisma. I don’t care that he’s No. 1. He’s my friend and I have a lot of trust in him.
One figure who played a more prominent role in the rise of Serbian tennis than is widely appreciated is Nenad Zimonjic. These days, the studious-looking Zimonjic with his greying goatee beard is thought of largely as an ageing doubles specialist, but he is in some ways the quiet godfather of Serbia’s tennis golden age. And his role in the Djokovic story began around this time.
Born in 1976, Zimonjic broke into the world’s top 200 in singles at the end of 1998 and the top 100 in doubles a couple of months later. In 1999 he reached the third round of the Wimbledon singles. Amid the dearth of Serbian talent in the post-Zivojinovic and post-break-up era, he was the shining light. Although a man of great, if softly spoken, self-confidence, he was never going to set the tennis world alight, but having been Yugoslav national champion at under-16 and under-18 level in singles, doubles and mixed, he was the leading player to emerge from Serbia in the 1990s and he, Dusan Vemic and Dejan Petrovic were the only Serbs playing regularly on the global pro tour. When the swimming pool at the ‘11 April’ sports club that had fallen into disrepair was refurbished as a carpeted singles tennis court, Zimonjic played an exhibition match at the official opening (the court allowed Ana Ivanovic and Janko Tipsarevic to continue practising during the Belgrade bombing and to learn something about playing on hard courts, as almost all the courts in Belgrade at that time were clay – see pages 62–3).
How good Zimonjic might have been had he not had diplomatic obstacles put in his way is open to question, but in some ways his contribution to Djokovic comes from what he learned from the post-1999 privations. He says,
At first we had one of the best passports in Europe but then, when the war started, I had to practise somewhere else. I was in the US and I saw how Serbia was being presented in the media. All the media talked about us as being really bad and then I’d be on the phone to my parents and they would tell me a completely different side of the story. And then you’d listen to what they talk about on CNN or hear about your country, about your people, something you can’t imagine. If you hear stories like this and you don’t know Serbia, you would think, ‘What kind of people are these Serbians?’ At first, we couldn’t compete, you couldn’t travel – when we got to borders, officials looked at us as if we were some kind of terrorists. And then there was the 1999 bombing and your family is there – that was really difficult. Sometimes I was there, sometimes I was outside but it wasn’t pretty at all. People went through really tough times. I felt I learned a lot through my own experience – I made a lot of mistakes, I didn’t have much support, but I learned a lot and I wanted to pass it on, so it wouldn’t take others as long as it took me to learn about life on the tour.
Zimonjic became aware of the promising Novak Djokovic before he was a teenager. ‘Srdjan used me a lot,’ Zimonjic adds. ‘He asked what I thought about the idea of Nole going to the Pilic Academy. I said I thought it was a great thing to do. Pilic was a great player, he coached a lot of guys. We didn’t have the high-quality coaches, so you can only benefit. If you look at all our players, they all practised outside Serbia.’
Zimonjic began to see a great Serbian generation coming around 2000. In early 2001 Serbia had the world’s top two juniors in Jelena Jankovic and Janko Tipsarevic, Djokovic had been spotted, as had Dejan Katic, who was the Orange Bowl under-12s champion in December 2000. And there were other promising juniors, such as Ilija Bozoljac, Viktor Troicki and Ana Ivanovic, all born between 1985 and 87, plus Boris Pashanski, a player already on the Futures circuit. Not all of them would make it, but if a handful did, Zimonjic could see it creating a golden era for Serbia.
In 2001 Zimonjic, by then a top-20 doubles player, invited Djokovic to practise with him at the Gemax club. He recalls,
We did two-on-one drills and I remember, even at 14, if he didn’t have to move or run, he would never miss a ball. He was already consistent then. He was incredible. I knew he was going to be a very good player but I had no idea he was going to be this good, mentally so strong, and to have the career he’s had. He did some work there with Ladislav Kis, then at Partizan with Marco Nesic, then with Bogdan Obradovic, so with a variety of coaches. He was working with the same fitness coach I had, Zoran Grebovic, and they used the same physio I had. They were trying to see what I was doing as a top player, to watch someone who was very professional and to copy that. The next stage was to see what the best in the world were doing in singles and, since he was 15 or 16, he always had a physio travelling with him. He was with Milos [Jelasavcic], who was my physio as well. I got Milos into the Davis Cup team. All this shows you how professional Novak was. He thinks of all the small details and the prevention of small injuries. Although he is doing incredible things like sliding on hard courts, you see how flexible he is and how well his body is taken care of. He didn’t miss much because of injury.
Zimonjic was in the driving seat when Tipsarevic made his debut in the Davis Cup at 15 in Tunisia. For two years (2003 and 2004), Zimonjic was the Serbian team’s player/captain and gave either debuts or sparring opportunities to Djokovic, Bozoljac and Troicki. His ultimate
reward came in December 2010 when Serbia won the Davis Cup. Zimonjic, by then 34, was very much the elder statesman in a team made up of the 23-year-old Djokovic, the 24-year-old Troicki and the 26-year-old Tipsarevic, and no doubt some saw him as just an elder brother brought in to stop the young pups from going overboard. But while Djokovic was the clear team leader and Troicki scored the winning point, Zimonjic had done much to lay the foundations for his country’s greatest tennis achievement as a nation.
While Zimonjic gave Djokovic his first chance in Davis Cup, Pilic gave him his first chance in tournaments. Pilic revelled in the title of ‘Master Coach’ of the German tennis association DTB. That made him not only the head of a network of around 11,500 coaches but he had wildcards (entry to the draw for tournaments) to give out for tennis events on German soil. As Pilic had a Futures tournament in Oberschleissheim (the suburb of Munich where he had his academy) in the first week of January, he gave one to Djokovic in 2003. That allowed Djokovic to play his first match in a professional tournament. He lost to the German Alex Radulescu 7–5, 7–6 but that was not a bad start for a 15-year-old.
Pilic also had influence outside Germany and requested a wildcard for Djokovic to play in four Futures-level tournaments in Belgrade in June and July. In late June, when the cream of the tennis world was at Wimbledon and Roger Federer was preparing to win his first major title, Djokovic beat Cesar Ferrer-Victoria 6–4, 7–5 in the final of the tournament at the Red Star Belgrade club. It was his first professional title and it was a source of great pride to all those who had helped Djokovic that it should have come on Serbian soil.
Based on what today’s juniors are put through, Djokovic played very few international tournaments in those days. His first one was the under-14s event in the French town of Tarbes known as ‘Les Petits As’ (the little aces) in February 2001, when he came up against a Scottish lad aged just a week older called Andrew Murray. Murray won the match 6–0, 7–6. These days, when asked what he remembers of the match, Djokovic says, ‘Andy’s curly hair and the fact that I was crushed.’ Whether losing the second set on a tie-break is really a crushing is open to debate but Djokovic clearly felt it was. Despite that defeat, Djokovic ended 2001 at the top of the Tennis Europe Junior Tour’s ‘14 & Under’ rankings, one place ahead of Murray at No. 2.
He only played three junior Grand Slam tournaments and, while he had a trip to Florida in late 2002 for three tournaments culminating in the Orange Bowl, most of his events were in Europe, with a large number in Serbia and Germany for practical and financial reasons. He got a taste for representing his country in team-tennis events when he led Serbia & Montenegro to victory in the Copa del Sol, the 14 & Under European outdoor team event. And in 2003 he competed in the Junior Davis Cup in Germany. He won all his five matches as ‘Yugoslavia’ (in effect Serbia & Montenegro) finished fifth.
His three Grand Slam junior events were the French and US Opens in 2003 and the 2004 Australian. He reached the third round in Paris, lost in the first in New York and was a semi-finalist in Melbourne. A decade on, it’s interesting to see who has made it from those who posted wins against the future world No. 1: his conqueror in Paris was Daniel Gimeno-Traver, in New York it was Robert Smeets and in Melbourne Josselin Ouanna. He also lost to Gael Monfils in the third round of a warm-up event in Melbourne. Gimeno-Traver, Smeets and Ouanna have all gone on to have modest careers with occasional moments in the limelight but none has got anywhere near Djokovic’s achievements. It’s a salutary lesson that a list of the world’s most promising juniors is no guide to world ranking lists of the future.
The weekend that Djokovic reached the semis in Melbourne, Serbia won its first Grand Slam main-draw title as Serbia (even though, technically, it was still Serbia & Montenegro, the last two remaining Yugoslav republics – the acronym YUG had been replaced by SCG in 2003, as opposed to today’s SRB for Serbia alone; any temptation to opt for S&M was resisted). Nenad Zimonjic partnered the Russian Elena Bovina to victory in the mixed doubles, beating the defending champions Leander Paes and 47-year-old Martina Navratilova 6–1, 7–6 in the final. Zimonjic had invited the 16-year-old Djokovic to sit in his box for the final and it was a natural extension for the player to invite the youngster to join the celebrations. At the party they held in a Melbourne nightclub, one of the revellers was Marat Safin, Djokovic’s idol. A year later they were to be rubbing shoulders in Melbourne again but this time on the Rod Laver Arena in a match with great significance for both of them.
On 22 May 2004 Djokovic turned 17. He was ranked 515 in the world but, having just won back-to-back Futures and Challenger tournaments in Hungary, he was guaranteed to jump 177 places to 338 just a couple of days later. Impressive enough, but what had become of Gencic’s prediction that he would be in the best five in the world on his 17th birthday? ‘Maybe I got it wrong,’ she said without much sheepishness, ‘but he had two very important years when he should have been in international junior competition in Europe and the Americas but they hadn’t got money to send him, so he didn’t travel. It would have been when he was 14 or 15. So yes, he was a year late but I still believed he’d be the best. I explained to Novak and the family, “Don’t worry, be patient, he’ll be the best.”’ (Actually, by her prediction, he was three years late: Djokovic didn’t break into the top five until 30 April 2007, but that was the time when a shift was taking place which meant the top players tended to mature later than had been the norm a decade or two before.)
One of the most significant milestones in Djokovic’s career had come about six months before his 17th birthday.
Over the years when Srdjan had been seeking funding for his son’s burgeoning career, he had become gradually more successful as Novak’s results started to justify all the promise. A meeting with Amit Naor proved particularly fruitful. Naor was an Israeli agent who was ploughing an independent furrow in player management and representation, not an easy job in a market cornered for many years by three big players: IMG, Advantage International (now Octagon) and ProServ (later SFx, now Blue Entertainment). Naor was already working with Ivan Ljubicic, the thoughtful Croat whose star was in the ascendant in 2003–4 after several years of steady but unremarkable results, and was keen to recruit someone from the next generation.
The deal Naor did together with his business associate Allon Khakshourian and the German coach-cum-agent Dirk Hordoff effectively ended the family’s financial worries. The negotiations were slightly comical, in that Srdjan had refused to learn any English, so Bogdan Obradovic had to interpret during discussions in an upmarket hotel. But the substance meant Djokovic and his family were provided for. The deal was reported to provide around €250,000 a year. The sum has never been confirmed and such figures have to be treated with caution, as they are normally a media construct based on maximum payments in an arrangement that pays more if certain performance targets are met. But whatever the exact figure, from then on, the player and his family were effectively in the clear.
In some ways, the deal should have come five years earlier – that was when the Djokovics needed the money, whereas by late 2003 Novak was on the point of starting to earn decent prize money. But the deal added to the sense of progress. For example, Djokovic got a wildcard into the ATP tournament in Bangkok in September 2004, an event where Khakshourian was the tournament director.
In 2008 Naor and Khakshourian entered an arrangement with the Hollywood talent agency CAA, which effectively took Djokovic to CAA. The agency was also keen to break the IMG/Octagon/SFx stranglehold, and Naor and Khakshourian recognised they had a better chance of succeeding as part of a bigger entity than on their own. Djokovic stayed with CAA until the end of 2012, when he switched to IMG, but the big deal for him was the first one done by Naor, Khakshourian and Hordoff.
After all, at that time there was no guarantee he would go on to post the body of work he has subsequently posted. In fact, if ever there was a time in Djokovic’s career when he was in danger of drifting, it was just before and after his 17th
birthday. He had left Pilic’s academy and had worked with a number of coaches in Serbia, but it wasn’t until September 2004 that he had his first touring coach.
Dejan Petrovic was an Australian of Serbian parentage who was born and grew up in Adelaide. He reached 116 in the doubles rankings but never cracked the top 150 in singles. However, having opted to play for Serbia, rather than Australia, he played three Davis Cup ties, profiting from the relative lack of Serbian players in the post-Yugoslav break-up era. He was, therefore, a largish fish in a smallish pond.
He had first met Djokovic at the Gemax club in Belgrade when Djokovic was 14 and being coached by Ladislav Kis, with whom Petrovic had played doubles in Australia. Another person based at Gemax was Milos Jelisavcic, the physiotherapist who worked with the Serbian Davis Cup team and later went on to travel with both Djokovic and Viktor Troicki. Jelasavcic knew Petrovic well and suggested he ‘come and look at this kid and tell me what you think’. Petrovic says, ‘What struck me was his will to win, and his self-belief was incredible. The first time we hit, he played a Futures at Red Star Belgrade and he won it. For him at that age, it was phenomenal. I never saw anyone have so much passion to win. He liked to joke off court but when he was on court, he was totally focused. And he had a willingness to learn – he’s the best student I’ve come across, in all aspects.’
Petrovic was still on the tour, hopeful of advancing up both the singles and doubles rankings, so his meetings with Djokovic were sporadic. They practised together at the Partizan club and, at 16, Djokovic went to Adelaide for a week before the Australian junior tournaments that culminated in the Australian Open boys singles. ‘We played a lot,’ Petrovic recalls. ‘He made semis of the Australian Open juniors and then, during the year, he came back to Belgrade for a week or so before a Futures and Challenger in Hungary. He won them both, so Srdjan kept contacting me, asking if I would work with Novak. At that stage, I was still professional and playing Davis Cup for Serbia, so initially I said no.’