The Sporting Statesman

by Chris Bowers

  There are various points where the Djokovic story shifts into a new gear and the two American hard-court Masters Series tournaments in March 2007 were clearly one such point. ‘The whole mania began in 2007 when Novak won in Miami,’ says Nenad Zimonjic. ‘It created such interest at home that, within a few months, we had the [Davis Cup] tie against Australia when 19,000 people came – when we won that tie, we qualified for the World Group. For me personally, starting from the bottom, from the fifth group, to go through a couple of different generations and now to have the opportunity to win the Davis Cup in front of your own crowd, it was incredible.’

  At Indian Wells in the California desert, Djokovic beat Andy Murray in the semi-finals to set up a final against Rafael Nadal. Nadal beat him 6–2, 7–5, but when the two met in the quarter-finals in Miami 11 days later, Djokovic notched up his first-ever win against Nadal, 6–3, 6–4. He went on to beat Murray and the wily Argentinean veteran Guillermo Canas to take the title. That took him into the world’s top 10, and when he went to Belgrade for his next official match, the Davis Cup tie against Georgia, he was ranked No. 7.

  This period in Djokovic’s rise is marked by the first of his forays into seeking outside help. He had been working with Marian Vajda for eight months when the two men – plus Srdjan – felt Djokovic needed some additional guidance on getting to the net. There was not a lot wrong with his volleys, but playing an aggressive game of tennis is not just about being willing to go to the net, it’s also about going there at the right time and with the right approach shot.

  They looked at a number of possible people to come in and help but eventually alighted on Mark Woodforde. The softly spoken South Australian is known as a doubles specialist because of his record-breaking partnership with Todd Woodbridge, but Woodforde had been a distinguished singles player – he reached the Australian Open semi-finals in 1996, often beating more powerful players by getting his tactics right at the right time. Woodforde was a contemporary of Vajda and they had played against each other a few times, so his first thought on being approached by Djokovic’s co-agent Allon Khakshourian was about where Vajda fitted into the picture if Woodforde was being summoned.

  ‘I said to Marian the first time we sat down that I’d be uncomfortable if he wasn’t on board with this,’ Woodforde says. ‘I said it has to be an association, I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with what we were trying to achieve. Khakshourian had explained that Marian was going to be there, Marian confirmed that he was still the coach but was worried that that transition from baseline to net was a vital part of Novak’s game that he wasn’t consciously able to call on and bring it into play when he needed to, so they wanted my help to work with Marian. I was cool with that. I just had no idea at the time about the strong influence that Srdjan had.’

  Woodforde joined the Djokovic set-up in March 2007, just before the tournament in Indian Wells. The Australian remembers the impression Djokovic created from the first day. ‘He was like a sponge,’ Woodforde says. ‘He had a thirst for information. He was never shy about stopping and asking someone. Srdjan understood that if you could take little things from people along the way, you’d build what you need. You have to give him [Srdjan] credit. The goal was to be No. 1 – it was so overpowering, it really shocked me, and picking up things along the way was all part of attaining the goal. Whilst it was nice to be tapped – and I did have the experience of being a pretty decent volleyer in my time – I was well aware I wasn’t the only person he was seeking advice from.’

  Off court, Djokovic had elements of the fun teenager (he turned 20 during Woodforde’s four months working with him). ‘He enjoyed night time,’ Woodforde recalls.

  He let his hair down in the evening. I could see he was heading in such a strong and healthy direction but I think we all have our moments. He was always on a quest to get fitter, stronger and to outlast Roger and Rafa – not just to compete with them but to outlast them, but there were a couple of nights in our time when he did enjoy himself. I wasn’t a clubbing person even when I played but I went out with him a couple of times and he loved the fact that people recognised him – he kind of revelled in that. He wore his glasses once or twice and he looked really stylish in them. I once asked him, ‘What are you – half-blind or something?’ And he said, ‘No, but they look good, don’t they?’ I thought they looked very scholarly.

  Woodforde had very little to do with Srdjan, largely because he didn’t speak much English. When he was around, he would talk with his son in Serbian and with Vajda in a mixture of Serbian and Slovak. ‘Dijana was much more comfortable with her English,’ Woodforde says, ‘and I was struck by Nole’s very impressive command of the English language. He’s obviously a very smart guy.’

  Djokovic had come to realise that he couldn’t beat Federer and Nadal solely from the baseline – he had to use his net game more. Yet Vajda explained to Woodforde that Djokovic would come to the net, get passed once or twice and say, ‘I’m not going there again.’ It wasn’t just hitting the volley that was the problem but the movement forward, the positioning, picking the right time to go in. The Djokovic camp appeared to be gearing up for the short but prestigious grass-court season, albeit making some adjustments on hard and clay along the way.

  Woodforde says, ‘I felt he was capable at the net but I wasn’t a fan of his backhand volley. There were little details. He would come in willy-nilly at times, so we sat down and talked, not just about being on the court but how he felt about coming to the net. If you don’t enjoy coming to the net, you’re not going to do it successfully when you need it.’

  Results-wise, the period after Woodforde joined the team was a dream. The run to the Indian Wells final, the victory over Nadal in Miami, which was of huge psychological significance – OK, so it was on Nadal’s least favourite surface, but Nadal had beaten Federer in Miami a couple of years earlier, so it was a genuinely morale-boosting result – then the title in Miami, a hero’s welcome at home in Davis Cup and a title on clay in Estoril. Things were going so well that Khakshourian sounded out Woodforde to ask if he would be willing to spend increasing amounts of time with Djokovic.

  But Djokovic’s run of victories presented problems, as all players face when they get on a productive run of form. Players, male and female, plan their schedule based on hoping to play around 60–70 matches a year; so if they expect to play an average of three matches per tournament, they will enter around 20 events. But if they then find they win back-to-back tournaments, the schedule becomes unsuitable and counterproductive, but by then the player has committed to the tournaments and can’t pull out without incurring a fine (unless they have an injury, or a doctor who’ll say they have an injury).

  It meant Djokovic approached the most intense period of the tennis year – the French Open and Wimbledon period – with his body starting to show signs of the physical battering it had taken. Woodforde says,

  Everything Novak did was in comparison to Rafa and Roger. He’d been experiencing all these great results in the Slams but he was breaking down in the quarters and the semis; physically, he was not at the same level from day one. So he was asking the questions: how can they last five sets? How can they back up after a punishing match? How can they sustain their fitness through a two-week tournament? He was starting to realise he needed to spend more time on the physical but he had put in a lot of work in the run-up to the French Open and then he got to the semi-finals, so he was pretty fatigued by the time he lost to Rafa in Paris. All this time, I’m trying to get him to work on new skills on the practice court, but it’s hard to pull the guy on to the court to get him to do another hour or two hours of work when he’s very tired from his run of matches.

  Djokovic and his camp wanted to take the week after the French off and then play a lower-ranking grass-court tournament the week before Wimbledon. Woodforde persuaded him to go to London, play his scheduled tournament at the Queen’s Club and then take the week before Wimbledon off. The thinking was that he’d be tired ei
ther way but, by playing Queen’s, he would get some decent matches on grass and then rest before Wimbledon. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Although Djokovic only played two matches, losing to Arnaud Clement, who was a much better grass player than he was ever given credit for, there was a lot of rain, so it took five days to get through the tournament. He then roused himself for Wimbledon, got through to the semi-finals but in a series of marathons that saw him play nine tie-breaks in four matches, leaving him as dead meat against Nadal in the semis (the story of how he very nearly pulled out of that match because of the inflamed toe that was the legacy of all his marathon matches is told on page 171).

  It had been a great four months since the start of Indian Wells, and at the end of Wimbledon, Woodforde was approached about working with Djokovic for another couple of months, at least until the end of the US Open. But it never happened. Woodforde was back at home in the USA and could sense there was some hesitation from Djokovic’s agents. Most of the top players take at least three weeks off after Wimbledon before returning on the North American hard courts, but Djokovic had committed to playing in Umag, Croatia, and didn’t want to pull out of the tournament in the country of his mother’s ethnicity, especially after being given a wildcard. In the second round, he lost to Viktor Troicki on a 7–5 final set. As the match wore on, the tiredness caught up with Djokovic. He went to the net more and more recklessly to keep the points short and was eventually picked off by his fellow Serb.

  ‘I was led to believe that Srdjan was irate that he’d lost,’ says Woodforde philosophically, ‘and wanted to know why Novak was going to the net recklessly.’

  This wasn’t part of the plan but it makes sense – when you’re tired, you don’t try to elongate the points, you try to shorten them, so he had this desire to rush to the net and was exposed. I was the guy who was brought in to help him get to the net and this happened. Suddenly, I got a message from the agent saying, ‘Thanks, we think we’ve got what we needed,’ and that was the end of it. These days I see him going to the net at the right time, and I know I was part of that. I don’t look at him and say, ‘That was me,’ because I was one of many who helped him. But the end seemed odd – it was certainly abrupt and I think Srdjan directed the whole scenario at the end. I wish I’d got more court time but I was aware of the accumulated workload he’d had at that time and I didn’t want to overdo it. Looking back, if I’d had a bit more court time, would it have happened sooner? You never know.

  Woodforde also notes that Djokovic was ‘always after information to make him a better player’ and Djokovic sought his next outside information from one of the greatest names in tennis, John McEnroe. In the three subsequent tournaments he played – Montreal, Cincinnati and the US Open – McEnroe helped with advice on volleys. And again the results were good.

  He won the Masters Series title in Montreal, with a run-in of Roddick in the quarter-finals, Nadal in the semis and Federer in the final – that final was his first victory over Federer and a psychological milestone over the newly crowned Wimbledon champion (for the fifth time). After losing to Carlos Moya in Cincinnati, Djokovic then had a reasonable draw at the US Open. He beat Moya in the quarters, then in the semis, instead of coming up against Nadal, he beat David Ferrer, the man who had beaten Nadal in the fourth round (at that stage in his career, Nadal was known for running out of steam on the North American hard-court swing). His straight-sets victory over Ferrer took him into his first major final, where Federer awaited him. So did Maria Sharapova and Robert de Niro, who were in the crowd cheering for the 20-year-old newcomer.

  A more experienced Djokovic would probably have beaten Federer that day. The Swiss was, in theory, at the peak of his career, going for a third major in a year for the third time, undisputed as the world’s best player and already being talked about as arguably the greatest of all time. But he was looking vulnerable. Many were shocked when he was taken to five sets by Nadal in the Wimbledon final and some of the confidence was missing from Federer’s game in the US final. His forehand was all over the place in the first set, in particular when Djokovic broke him to lead 6–5 and 40–0. But Djokovic, who’d had two set points at 5–4, missed five more and double-faulted on Federer’s first set point in the tie-break. Djokovic had two set points at 6–5 in the second set but lost the set on a second tie-break. Djokovic had chances in the third but, by then, Federer was away, Djokovic was looking increasingly ragged, and Federer ran out the winner in straight sets.

  Many were saying after that final that Djokovic had shown he wasn’t up to taking his opportunities when they presented themselves. That was a bit harsh for a man in his first Grand Slam final and still only 20 years of age. But when Federer admitted after the match that he had been nervous because of a stomach upset that had left him with ‘nervous shaking and cold hands’ before the final, it did seem as if a rare opportunity to beat the Grand Master had been offered and declined.

  Federer revealed later that, in the two men’s chit-chat at the net after the match, he had told Djokovic to ‘keep it up’ and that the two men would have lots more battles in the future. They were to meet in another major just four months later, and Djokovic was to show that he had indeed learned something from his US Open missed opportunity.

  It was around the middle of 2007 that Djokovic made a name for himself in a way that he has slightly struggled with since. Though a very serious and studious man on the court, he has a great sense of fun off it and is clearly a very sharp observer of people. He must also have some innate acting ability because it emerged that he was highly proficient at impersonating other tennis players.

  Like the best comedians and impressionists, he had a few classic acts with which he built a reputation, and they really were very good. A BBC camera caught him doing Maria Sharapova, Rafael Nadal, Goran Ivanisevic and Lleyton Hewitt on a practice court at London’s Queen’s Club just before the 2007 Wimbledon championships, after which word got around. His highest-profile performance came after beating Carlos Moya in the 2007 US Open quarter-finals, when the on-court interviewer asked him to do some impressions. With the crowd still in good number, Djokovic offered them Maria Sharapova, Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick, and brought the house down. But perhaps the more revealing footage is a private video that made its way to YouTube, which shows Djokovic doing a handful of impressions in the men’s locker room. Some of the players he impersonates are not household names, so the impersonations would be lost on all but players and tour groupies, but the attention to detail is remarkable. Like the best cartoonists, he takes a gesture or nervous tic and exaggerates it, which sometimes creates a very different impression of the person being impersonated. His impersonation of Roger Federer overdoes the effeminate gestures that are part of Federer’s on-court persona but the overall sense is still very much that this is Roger Federer he’s portraying.

  After doing his Sharapova impression at the 2008 Australian Open, Djokovic rather shut down the show. ‘I was serving at 4–4, 30–30 in an important match,’ he told CBS television, ‘and a guy goes, “Hey, Novak, do the impersonation of Sharapova, we like that, make us laugh.”’ That sent a message that the sideshow was threatening to usurp the main act. He also said he had received some bad responses from his fellow professionals and he didn’t want unease in the locker rooms and player lounges. He admits that Rafael Nadal was offended when he did the tugging-at-the-underpants gesture Nadal seems unable to shake off. Of course, Nadal won’t thank anyone for making fun of him, but he is known on the tour as a bit of a practical joker himself and he’s able to laugh about it, as he had to on the podium after beating Djokovic in the 2009 Rome Masters final – Djokovic, the loser, was asked to imitate Nadal after both men had received their trophies; Djokovic obliged but was clearly embarrassed to be doing so in front of Nadal. Djokovic has said publicly he doesn’t want to offend Nadal twice.

  The impersonations may have an important role to play as a form of release for Djokovic. ‘He’s very serious when
he comes to tennis,’ says his former coach, the Australian-raised Dejan Petrovic, ‘but he’s not the type to be serious all the time. It’s in his blood that he likes to joke. That’s a bit of the Serbian mentality – we Serbians like to joke a lot. He possesses something phenomenal, that when it’s on a tennis court in a match, he’s serious 100 per cent – not one thing enters his mind but winning the match. With him, the mind just doesn’t wander.’ And the Serbian tennis commentator Nebojsa Viskovic says, ‘He needs the jokes, it’s his release valve.’ One could equally argue that the increasingly baseline-orientated sport of tennis needs the parallel humour of seeing a top player’s sense of fun.

  Djokovic says today, ‘I felt that it became too forced at times – people would force me to do it when I didn’t quite feel like it. I was doing those impersonations on practice courts at first, at the end of my training sessions. It was a way to relax and have fun and entertain the crowd that came to watch me. The word spread and all of a sudden they asked me to do it in front of the cameras on stadiums. The first couple of times it was fun, but then it started being too forced and I just didn’t want to do it any more. And I didn’t want to have people guessing if I am offending someone or not, because that was never the motive behind it. I’m glad my colleagues got that part right and joked with me.’

  Perhaps a feeling that he’d got his message across allowed him to resume the act when the mood took him. Certainly, by 2013 his willingness to do the impersonations was returning. He did Sharapova at a pre-Wimbledon exhibition tournament, an act that had extra spice given that he did it during a match against Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian who had just begun dating Sharapova. Dimitrov loved it but Sharapova admonished Djokovic gently in her pre-Wimbledon press conference, saying she had eliminated many of the gestures that were the staple of his impersonation. That’s obviously the problem – his imitation makes a player aware of their tics, which prompts the player (well, some players) to eradicate them.