by Chris Bowers
Another member of the Serbian media to meet Djokovic at the age of 12 was Nebojsa Viskovic. A regular commentator for the state-funded national television service RTS, Viskovic saw the potential of Djkovic and wanted to do all he could to help. At one stage he tried to use his work for a government project to leverage $100,000 for Djokovic. It came to nothing as the letter he wrote was ignored, but he tried. He also took Djokovic’s middle brother Marko on some trips to Geneva when working for RTS. Viskovic says,
I was working on a TV magazine programme and I did a number of features with Novak. I felt he could be a great player, he had a good position in the junior rankings, and I just sensed it. People I spoke to who were experts said, ‘There is something about him that could be very special – he has great potential.’ There were no tournaments in Serbia, so he had to travel a lot within Europe, so I didn’t have much chance to watch him playing. But everyone whose opinion was valued was saying good things about him. We had had no quality players since Bobo Zivojinovic, so I felt it would be a good investment to get to know Novak while he was still a young junior. He told me I was the best in the business and he valued my opinion, which was nice for me – I suppose he’d heard me on TV.
Viskovic certainly felt he had a good relationship with both Djokovic’s parents, but he was to learn that, the moment Srdjan felt someone had been the slightest bit critical of his son, he or she became persona non grata and all previous help was forgotten.
The first public sign of conflict came when Serbia travelled to Geneva in September 2006 to play Switzerland in a Davis Cup playoff round tie. A month before, Srdjan had made comments in the Serbian media denigrating Roger Federer (whether that added to Federer’s venom in his final press conference that weekend is not clear – see page 166). Srdjan then told Viskovic that he wanted him to cheer for Djokovic like a supporter when commentating. ‘He wanted me to just ignore the opponent’s good moves, or to be silent,’ recalls Viskovic. ‘Basically, he wanted me to be a fan, which is totally different from my point of view of what a commentator has to do. A commentator has to be objective. Of course, when a Serbian player is on court you do move the boundary a little because I want him to win and my viewers do, but you still have to be objective.’
Viskovic’s refusal to change his commentary style meant further clashes were always likely, and the next flashpoint came during the semi-finals of the 2008 Hamburg Masters when Djokovic – by now Australian Open champion – faced Rafael Nadal.
Viskovic was commentating on his own from RTS’s studios in Belgrade. The first set was keenly fought, Nadal eventually taking it 7–5. As Viskovic signed off for the two-minute end-of-set break, Srdjan stormed into the commentary booth, screaming at the security guards, ‘I’m the father of Novak Djokovic!’ Viskovic recalls, ‘He marched in, he told me it was a disgrace that I’m a Serbian commentator and that I’m obsessed with Nadal, or something like that. I just told him to walk away, or something similar. The microphone was off – he was sufficiently sensitive to know he couldn’t do it when the microphone was live – but it was very aggressive and I found it was really hard to concentrate after that. I was really upset and, as I happened to have some sedative pills in my bag, I took one.’
The following Monday, Viskovic got hold of Alexander Tijanic, the editor-in-chief at RTS, and said he wanted him to listen to the recording and judge what had happened. ‘I wanted protection,’ Viskovic says, ‘but I didn’t get it. The editor told me he would handle it in his own way, which meant doing nothing to offend Srdjan.’
Viskovic obviously felt he was on moderately safe ground, for he ignored Tijanic’s request to say nothing to the media. The media got to hear about Srdjan’s invasion of the commentary box and it became a big story. A Facebook group entitled ‘Support for Nebojsa Viskovic’ was set up and, for a few days, it reached 10,000 followers. Whether that protected Viskovic’s position within RTS is hard to tell – it must have been tempting for Tijanic and co to fire a commentator who was increasingly at loggerheads with the father of the country’s emerging sporting hero. But Viskovic was being portrayed as the good guy in the media, and the station’s failure to protect him was looking somewhat shabby.
Not that it made much difference in the long run. Nine months later, the inaugural Serbian Open took place at the ‘Novak’ club in Belgrade. It was a low-ranking ATP tour-level tournament built on the back of Djokovic’s success. Srdjan, who was a leading light in the tournament organisation, asked RTS to exclude Viskovic from the RTS commentary team at the tournament – it was not just a request for Viskovic to be banned from commentating on Djokovic’s matches, but any match. Srdjan backed up his request with a threat that he would give the TV rights to another broadcaster if Viskovic was allowed to commentate. The RTS editor conceded, whereupon Viskovic quit. Viskovic says RTS, probably fearing a media backlash, offered him more money, but he said no, saying there would only be more problems in the future.
One could argue that the tactic backfired on Srdjan. Viskovic had been doing a bit of moonlighting for an emerging independent sports station, Sport Klub, which had started in 2006 and was looking to expand its rights portfolio. So Sport Klub snapped up Viskovic as one of its leading tennis commentators.
Interestingly, Viskovic says Srdjan tried to put pressure on the editor of Sport Klub not to give Viskovic Djokovic’s matches, but counter-intuitive as it may seem, it was the private station that stood up to Srdjan in a way the state-funded broadcaster hadn’t. The result has been that Viskovic now commentates more matches than when he was with RTS, and far more of Djokovic’s. Sport Klub has the rights to show 54 ATP tournaments a year, including all the Masters-1000 Series and the ATP World Tour Finals, so Viskovic commentates on almost every match Djokovic plays outside the four Grand Slam tournaments (Wimbledon is the only major for which Sport Klub has rights).
There was one final skirmish between Srdjan and Viskovic. In April 2010 the Serbian Tennis Federation asked Viskovic to be master of ceremonies for the Fed Cup home tie between Serbia and the Slovak Republic. When Srdjan found out, he told the federation that this was not possible. Given the dependence of the federation on Djokovic’s willingness to play Davis Cup (and Serbia had not won the cup at that point), it was hardly surprising that Viskovic was stood down. He was given his agreed fee but told he could not work as MC. The story again got into the media, with one newspaper, Kurir, running a double-picture on its front page with Viskovic as the good guy and Srdjan the bad guy. Djokovic clearly saw it, but Serbia’s Davis Cup captain Bogdan Obradovic, who was both a former coach of Djokovic and a good friend of Viskovic, explained exactly how the problem had come about and that Srdjan was largely the cause of it.
Since 2009–10, Srdjan and Viskovic have acted as if the other doesn’t exist. ‘Voja Velickovic doesn’t speak with Srdjan,’ Viskovic says. ‘Every journalist in Serbia has a problem with Srdjan, I just had the biggest problem.’
Yet it wasn’t just coaches and members of the media who Srdjan fell out with. In April 2004, three months after Djokovic had reached the Australian Open boys’ semi-finals, the Serbian Davis Cup player-captain Nenad Zimonjic picked the still-17-year-old to be the fourth member of his Davis Cup team for the tie against Latvia. The tie was played on a fast indoor carpet at the Gemax club in Belgrade. Zimonjic was still playing singles and had won a Challenger-level tournament a few weeks before, he had the young Janko Tipsarevic for second singles, who by then was inside the world’s top 200, and he had Dejan Petrovic, who had been top 150 in doubles. So he didn’t need Djokovic, but having had him as a hitting partner for a couple of Davis Cup weekends, Zimonjic named him in the team for experience.
Djokovic fully expected to play and was very disappointed when he didn’t. ‘It was amazing,’ Zimonjic recalls. ‘He thought he was going to play on the first day. I remember him telling me he was so disappointed he couldn’t play. I said, “Listen, you’ll get the chance to play but you have to start gradually. It’s a lot of pressu
re in Davis Cup, you’re still young, there’s plenty of time for you, even when you play a dead rubber it’s going to be tough for you to handle this.” He was talking about, “When am I going to have a chance to play, what do I have to do to earn a chance to play?” He was never afraid of the challenge. I’ve never seen him afraid of anybody, or of having this responsibility, whoever it was. That was incredible, even then.’ Djokovic accepted the decision and was ultimately happy to make his Davis Cup debut in a dead rubber against Janis Skroderis, a match he won 6–2, 6–2 to see Serbia to a 5–0 win.
Less accepting of the decision was Srdjan. ‘He thought it was my biggest mistake that I didn’t play Novak on the first day,’ says Zimonjic. ‘He didn’t approve and from that point on we didn’t talk at all. The next time we really said hello was over a year later, when Novak invited me to his 18th birthday party and his parents were welcoming the guests. Novak asked me six or seven times, “Please come.” That was the first time I said hello to Srdjan after that Davis Cup tie. Once Novak turned 18, it was a lot easier to deal with him because I could do most things directly and not through Srdjan – I have respect for Srdjan and he has respect for me but I don’t really communicate that much with him.’
Dejan Petrovic tells a similar story. He was Djokovic’s coach from late summer 2004 to just after Wimbledon 2005. He was brought in to see Djokovic through the Futures and Challenger tournaments and into the realm of tour-level and Grand Slam draws. During the 10 months they worked together, Djokovic moved from 272 to 94 in the rankings, at that time the highest-rising player on the ATP circuit.
‘No one quite knows why it ended and there’s no satisfactory explanation,’ Petrovic says. ‘Srdjan plays a huge part in the story. He always was the boss. Huge credit goes to him, whether you like him or not. He always tried to give Nole everything, the best that he possibly could. Nole knows that. Srdjan shares Nole’s hunger for victory but Srdjan is a very hard man. The downfall for him is that he burns bridges. During the time you’re with him, you can’t really complain that much. He’s a nice man to have a beer with. If he likes you, it’s fine, but if he doesn’t like you, well, he doesn’t like you and there’s nothing you can do about it. I think he regrets a lot of those things.’
Petrovic says he had a verbal agreement to work with Djokovic for three years, and a contract for one year, yet never received any compensation for his employment being terminated early. Not that it seems to worry him – he has the non-confrontational laid-backness of the Australian more than the wounded pride of the Serb and is happy to have been a helping hand on Djokovic’s route to the top. Although he gave up his playing career to coach Djokovic, his long-term aim was always to set up an academy in Serbia, and he has one now in Kragujevac, about 130 kilometres south of Belgrade. Djokovic’s presence at the top of the world rankings is the biggest boost to Petrovic’s welfare that he could want, and he also coached the next rising Serb, Nikola Milojevic, for a while, so he has a hand in two players who could enhance the standing of tennis in Serbia.
But Petrovic only hints at the language used by Srdjan when Djokovic Sr fired him:
My culture is never to hate anyone and, in that sense, I don’t really understand the way Srdjan finished with me. It wasn’t very nice; the words he used were not acceptable for somebody who stopped their career and basically gave their heart to his son. It wasn’t an appropriate way to finish. He fired me but there was no need to do it like that. My culture, coming from Australia, was always to do things in a nice, diplomatic way and I was never an aggressive person, so to this day I don’t understand his philosophy. But I understand that’s how he ends all relationships. Srdjan has his own philosophy and he’s got a short fuse. If he had a bigger fuse, if he had time to think about it, he wouldn’t say some of the things he does. But he gets fired up. And he never apologises. Apologising isn’t in his system. I understand that if someone speaks badly about his son, he would automatically be in conflict. But when someone means the best for his son and would almost do anything for his son – that I didn’t understand and, to this day, I don’t understand his philosophy in that regard. It’s something Novak has changed because Srdjan was ruining his reputation.
Djokovic has, indeed, become more the boss since becoming an adult but he has done so slowly and subtly. And the way Petrovic’s time with him came to an end illustrates that he was never going to go against his father until he could stand on his own feet. Petrovic says,
We were in this house for the [Wimbledon] qualifying tournament and, when he qualified, I said, ‘OK, it’s time for a beer to celebrate qualifying for Wimbledon.’ So he had a very rare beer to celebrate. That’s when I announced that this would be the last tournament we’d be working together. I’d had a meeting with Srdjan after Roland Garros and knew that Wimbledon would be the last one … We both had tears in our eyes and we hugged each other. I said, ‘Let’s make sure we finish on a high.’ And he got to the third round that year, so we did go out on a high. Srdjan was the boss, so Nole couldn’t make the decisions. He knew how much the family had made sacrifices for him, so there was no question of him saying, ‘No, I don’t want to switch from Petrovic to Piatti.’
So was Srdjan a monster? Almost certainly not, even if he did often behave in a way that left people feeling he was pretty monstrous.
Srdjan himself has never given an interview in English and he rarely gives interviews in Serbian. But he did agree to an hour-long interview with Serbia’s B92 television station two months after Serbia had won the Davis Cup in December 2010. Disaffected with the leadership of Djordjo Antelj and Slobodan Zivojinovic in the Serbian Tennis Federation, Srdjan was part of a coup to oust the industrialist and the former Wimbledon semi-finalist. Most of the interview is about the federation and the coup, but in the last few minutes he talks about himself and the role he played in doing his best for his eldest son:
I don’t think I’m arrogant. I don’t think I’m unpleasant. I only say what I think is right and just. I say what I mean. We as a family have nothing to be ashamed of. And I as head of this family have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to cover up. If something hurts me, I talk about it. I expect people to accept what I say in a right way. And believe me, ordinary folk in cities across Serbia not only accept it in a right way but accept it with enthusiasm because I say what I mean. I don’t hide behind the fancy statements of some marketing agency. They know very well how difficult our life as a family has been for the last 17 years. We lived in rented apartments, we had to borrow money since we didn’t have enough ourselves, even though we had reasonable income for the times. Novak’s expenses for his career were more than we could afford. We borrowed money from loan sharks at 10, 12, 15 per cent monthly interest rates. And we struggled to repay these loans – it was bloody hard. It even happened on numerous occasions that we didn’t have money to buy our daily bread. And then we sold all the gold jewellery that my wife and I owned. And then we slept on a sofa bed in a living room of one of those rented apartments for 10 years. We couldn’t afford a new mattress; instead we used old blankets to cover the springs which were poking into our chest and back.
Asked whether it was all worth it, he said, ‘Of course, but without any help from anybody. Not the country, or the city officials, or the tennis association.’
Some context is needed here. Serbia in the early 2000s was a country recovering from a bloody civil war and the loss of its preeminent position in a country where it was the most influential of six federated states. Needless to say, not every business transaction that took place in Serbia was entirely clean, much business was conducted under the table, and many people in Serbia who did well at that time would not welcome too much scrutiny of their business affairs. It was in this environment that Srdjan saw it as his job to finance the launch pad for his son’s career. He sold his Belgrade restaurant around this time to free up cash for Novak to fund his travelling as a junior, and he eventually got rid of the pizzeria in Kopaonik, albeit in a long laws
uit involving complications over the fact that he had used the premises rent-free for many years. No suggestion of impropriety is made here, but some understanding is needed of the difficult economic climate in which he was operating, one in which it would probably be unfair to condemn those who sought merely to find a level playing field.
The problem is that Srdjan’s abrasiveness not only created enemies but means he is sometimes judged by reputation. He has told the story of having gone to a government official to ask for money and been turned away empty-handed. But there is a version of that story that suggests Srdjan was the architect of his own undoing. According to this version, the official concerned had a habit of recording all conversations. Srdjan had gone in with a couple of friends and, at one stage in the interview, the official had left the room, ostensibly to check something but in reality to listen in to the conversation being held in his absence between Srdjan and his friends. As Srdjan’s tone had changed from polite benevolence to disparaging comments about the official, the interview came to nothing – in fact, the official is alleged to have confronted Srdjan with what he had said during his absence. Whether the story is true is not certain but that’s almost irrelevant – Srdjan’s reputation for interpersonal skills was such that most people who knew him could believe it was true, so he was judged by his past record, whether or not he bad-mouthed the government official.