The Sporting Statesman

by Chris Bowers

  If an element of racism still pertains in today’s Serbian society, what of attitudes to other minorities? Serbian society’s view of homosexuality seems old-fashioned by western-European standards, although as recent debates on same-sex marriage have shown (especially in Great Britain and France), there are many in western Europe who are still troubled by same-gender sexual relationships. When the Belgrade Pride parade scheduled for September 2013 was cancelled for the third year running, the authorities were quick to say the decision was taken for security reasons after threats of violence from right-wing and paramilitary groups had emerged from proposed counter-marches. Given that Serbia is applying for EU membership and thus the protection its legal system gives to minority rights will be closely scrutinised by the European Commission, this was probably a wise way to present it. But the fact that there was support for the proposed counter-demonstration from across Serbia, a country in which the Serb Orthodox Church still plays an influential role, suggests that tolerance of homosexuality is still somewhat embryonic.

  The one national characteristic that the Serbs are often accused of – and which many freely plead guilty to – is a victim complex. Wilson says they ‘revel in the role of the victims of Europe’ and, in his fascinating book Behind the Curtain, he writes, ‘Self-doubt is the defining characteristic of Serbian football: they are Europe’s most consistent chokers.’ He suggests the victim complex stems from Serbia’s defeat in Kosovo in 1389, which left the once independent country under the control of the Ottoman Empire: ‘The defeat remains central to the Serbian psyche: they are the wrongly oppressed but glorious losers.’

  The BBC’s man in Belgrade, Guy De Launey, pinpoints it to slightly more recent times but still says the sense of the Serbs as victims is very real.

  Part of it comes from what happened to the Serbs during the Second World War. In Croatia, the fascist Ustase murdered tens or even hundreds of thousands of Serbs. That wasn’t forgotten, and when Croat nationalism picked up again in the early 1990s, Serbs living in Croatia were frightened. It was almost as if the conflict resumed in 1991 where it had left off in 1945. Even when it comes to the Hague war-crimes tribunal, there’s a perception in Serbia that the Serbs on trial were treated a lot more harshly than others, especially in terms of bail conditions. They saw Croatia and Kosovo spending millions on the defence of their generals and gaining acquittals, leaving the Serbs as the major villains of the piece – but they’ll point out that more Serbs were displaced during the conflict than people of any other ethnicity.

  De Launey also observes that ‘there’s an image of the Serbs as a lazy people, yet they are all mad on physical activity. There’s even a risk of “boot-camping” youngsters if they show any talent at a sport, and sometimes if they don’t.’

  These are largely speculative points of view based on the personal experience of a sample of individuals and hardly the result of deep-rooted socio-anthropological analysis. Most visitors to Serbia will find a largely welcoming if not effusive people, many of them oppressed more by the dictates of everyday life than by any national characteristic of victimhood, racism or national identity. There is one distinctive characteristic that visitors to Serbia will encounter – a strong sense that ‘this is my town and you are the guest’, which can lead to locals insisting on paying the bill when it makes much more sense for visitors to do so. It’s a fault that’s easily forgiven because it comes from a sense of wanting to make outsiders welcome.

  Serbia is in a good position to make the most of integrating itself into the European picture – it speaks the same language as many of its neighbours, so it can build bridges to neighbouring states (not just the ex-Yugoslav republics but also Russia to the north and east) without running up massive translation bills, and it has proved a target for investment among many leading global companies. With its reasonable work ethic, there seems every reason why Serbia, if it plays its cards right, could be much more successful in the European economy than nations such as Greece, Portugal and even Spain and Italy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

  In 1961 the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Ivo Andric. It was a belated reward for his book The Bridge over the Drina, written in 1945 but only translated into English in 1959. For a Nobel Prize-winning novel, it is still remarkably little known, though that may well change when Emir Kusturica’s film adaptation hits the big screen in late 2014 (Kusturica is playing a similar role to Djokovic in the arts world – a Serbian film director telling the world that Serbia is not just a by-word for atrocities, although Kusturica’s manner is much more abrasive than Djokovic’s).

  The book tells the violent story of the Bosnian town of Visegrad, just inside the Bosnian-Serbian border, in the 300 years after a bridge was built there over the river Drina in the early 17th century. It is a work of fiction but based strongly around historical facts. Many have described it as a fitting introduction to the complexity and character of the history of the Balkans, and while Visegrad is Bosnian, many of its problems and mix of population go for the whole of ex-Yugoslavia. In 1878, in the settlement that saw Serbia and Montenegro gain independence, Bosnia was transferred from the Ottoman Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this (slightly abridged) extract from the book, Andric describes how this transfer affected the sleepy town of Visegrad:

  [As the soldiers began to move away,] officials began to arrive, civil servants with their families and, after them, artisans and craftsmen for all those trades which up till then had not existed in the town. At first it seemed that they had come by chance, as if driven by the wind, and as if they were coming for a short stay to live more or less the same life as had always been lived here, as though the civil authorities were to prolong for a short time the occupation begun by the army. But with every month that passed the number of newcomers increased. However, what most astonished the people of the town and filled them with wonder and distrust was not so much their numbers as their immense and incomprehensible plans, their untiring industry and the perseverance with which they proceeded to the realisation of those plans … It seemed the newcomers were resolved with their impalpable yet ever more noticeable web of laws, regulation and orders to embrace all forms of life, men, beasts and things, and to change and alter everything, both the outward appearance of the town and the customs and habits of men from the cradle to the grave … Every task that they began seemed useless and even silly. They measured out the waste land, numbered the trees in the forest, inspected lavatories and drains, looked at the teeth of horses and cows, asked about the illnesses of the people, noted the number and types of fruit-trees and of different kinds of sheep and poultry.

  Andric is effectively telling the story, from the residents’ perspective, of how the new Austrian rulers were modernising Visegrad. One could see it as the imposition of Germanic order and discipline on live-and-let-live Balkan culture, and indeed the nice sleepy way of life that doesn’t need house numbers because ‘everyone knows the priest’s or the cobbler’s house’ is very attractive as an antidote to the anonymity of big-city existence. But modern industrialised society could only ever have come about with large numbers of people whose lives were logged to some extent by civilian authorities, so what Andric describes happening in Visegrad would have happened, eventually, in all parts of the Balkans.

  Why is this relevant to the Djokovic story? Because there is a feature of Djokovic that sets him apart from his fellow-Serbs. Talk to any Serbs, or indeed many people from the Balkans, and they will happily admit to a national character trait of victimisation. Then in the next breath, they might talk about how they were treated unfairly at The Hague when the war crimes of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s came to be assessed. It’s as if they need to have someone to blame, or are enjoying their victimhood. In The Bridge over the Drina, Andric describes a group of women waving goodbye to their sons who had been conscripted, noting about them, ‘It seemed as if they loved their tears and their wailing as much as they love
d those for whom they wept.’ This is what the English football journalist Jonathan Wilson means when he talks in his book Behind the Curtain about the Serbs ‘revelling in the role of the victims of Europe’ and their self-image as the ‘wrongly oppressed but glorious losers’.

  It is probably dangerous to get too much into national characteristics and stereotypes, but it is clear that there was no room for a victim mentality, wailing or being a glorious loser in the Djokovic psyche. He worked out very early that if he wanted to get to the top in tennis, he had to be disciplined and totally professional about his approach. Jelena Gencic noted how he turned up to his first session with her at the age of six with his bag fully packed (including a banana!). Nikki Pilic arranged to hit with him at 2pm, only to find him warming up 20 minutes early. Mark Woodforde, who worked for three months with Djokovic in 2008 as a consultant, said he was ‘like a sponge in his thirst for information that might help him’.

  And the words of Dejan Petrovic are interesting. On seeing Djokovic for the first time at the age of 14, the Australian-raised Serb says,

  The first thing I noticed about him was his professionalism and his dedication towards the sport. The first time we met at Partizan [the Belgrade sports club where Djokovic sometimes played], I came 15 or 20 minutes earlier and I recall him running around the court, stretching – that was him; he was a perfectionist in every way. I saw that he wasn’t ‘from Serbia’ – if he’d been a typical Serbian, he’d have come on time, or maybe even a few minutes late. You could see that he was somewhere else. He always told me that being at the Pilic tennis academy at a young age and at such a critical stage of his career did him wonders – having to know what was in his bag, being on time, warming up, stretching. But it was probably in him already.

  And yet there is a theme of sickness, or not quite optimum health, that runs through the Djokovic story. It peaked in 2008–9 with the culmination of a series of mid-match treatments and retirements from matches that exploded in the on-court post-match interviews at the US Open.

  If you discount the match he retired from against Mohamed Mamoun of Egypt in a Futures tournament in 2003, Djokovic has retired mid-match 11 times in tour-level matches: four in majors, two in Davis Cup, two Masters-1000s and three lower-ranking tour events. The rate has slowed down, for reasons that will be explained shortly: his withdrawal from the Australian Open quarter-finals in 2009 was his eighth and there have only been three since (at the time this book to press). But that is still well ahead of other members of the world’s top 10. Tomas Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga have retired four times each, Rafael Nadal and Juan-Martin del Potro twice each and Roger Federer once (although he did concede two matches on walkovers).

  There are no public statistics on the amount of times a player calls for the trainer mid-match, but by 2008 Djokovic had made a name for himself as a player who called the trainer so often it was thought to be largely tactical. Riccardo Piatti, who coached him from July 2005 to May 2006, says it was indeed often tactical. ‘He had a problem with his nose,’ Piatti recalls. ‘Before we went to America, I warned him it would be very hot and humid, and he might struggle. In Cincinnati it was very hot and then in the first round of the US Open it was humid and he played five sets against Gael Monfils. I’d told him he might need to call for the trainer to take a break if he found himself having difficulty breathing.’ Early in the fifth set against Monfils, Djokovic fell down after a rally and called for the trainer. Piatti says he did it deliberately – on the basis of Piatti’s advice – to buy himself some time. He was fortunate that the trainer took 12 minutes to arrive on court; by then Djokovic had cooled down and was breathing more freely, so he got his leg massaged and went back on court, beating the Frenchman 7-5 in the fifth set.

  Piatti took Djokovic to see a nose specialist in Milan, one who had treated the Italian footballer Andrea Pirlo for a nasal problem. He found Djokovic had a double deviated septum and recommended surgery to remedy it. That surgery took place in November 2005 at the start of the off-season and was largely successful, but the injury timeouts continued.

  In Serbia’s Davis Cup playoff-round tie against Switzerland in September 2006, Djokovic trailed Stanislas Wawrinka by two sets to one on the opening day and called the trainer after the third set to have his legs massaged. He went on to win the match in five, but Wawrinka’s team-mate Roger Federer was so angry at what he saw as pure gamesmanship that he launched a stinging attack on Djokovic after he had crushed the Serb 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 to seal Switzerland’s win on the Sunday afternoon. ‘I don’t trust his injuries,’ he said during his main post-match press conference, drawing a few nervous laughs from the assembled journalists. ‘No, it’s not funny,’ he added admonishingly, ‘I’m serious. I think he’s a joke when it comes to his injuries. The rules are there to be used but not abused. But it’s what he’s been doing many times, so I wasn’t happy to see him doing it and then running around like a rabbit again. It was a good handshake for me, I was happy to beat him.’ Federer later had an informal chat with the Swiss press, at which he added, ‘I got irritated on Friday when he put on this show in his match against Wawrinka. Ninety-five per cent of players use these breaks fairly but this isn’t fair and the rules need to be changed,’

  Although Djokovic denied he had used gamesmanship against Wawrinka, and he and Federer had a chat in Madrid a few weeks later and made up, he was by now a marked man. Whenever he called for the trainer mid-match, journalists and commentators would mutter – some inwardly, some outwardly – that the injury may be for real or may be tactical. Matters reached a head at the 2008 US Open, when Djokovic twice called for the trainer to deal with hip, ankle, stomach and breathing problems in his fourth-round match against Tommy Robredo. Djokovic won the match in five sets, to set up a quarter-final against the winner of the match later that day between Andy Roddick and Fernando Gonzalez.

  When Roddick won that match, he was asked by the on-court interviewer whether he felt good going into his quarter-final, given Djokovic’s various ailments. When the interviewer started to list them, beginning with an ankle injury, the witty but abrasive Roddick interrupted, saying, ‘Isn’t it both of them? And a back, and a hip? And a cramp?’ Later in the interview Roddick added, ‘Bird flu? Anthrax? Sars? Common cough and cold? If it’s there, it’s there. There’s just a lot. You know, he’s either quick to call a trainer or he’s the most courageous guy of all time. I think it’s up for you guys to decide. I’ve got to feel good, he’s got about 16 injuries right now.’ Djokovic beat Roddick in four sets in the quarter-final, though he was lucky not to have to go to five, as Roddick served for the fourth set and double-faulted twice to let the Serb off the hook. So now it was Djokovic’s turn to be interviewed on-court. ‘That’s not nice to say in front of this crowd that I have 16 injuries and that I’m faking,’ he said. ‘They’re already against me because they think I’m faking everything.’ Djokovic left the court to boos, this just a year after the Flushing Meadows crowd had loved him for his on-court impressions, including imitating all Roddick’s nervous tics. As with most storms in teacups, it blew itself out pretty quickly. Roddick said he had meant his comments in jest, Djokovic apologised for overreacting, and that was that.

  And yet the problem still didn’t go away. At the next major, the 2009 Australian Open, the two men again met in the quarter-finals and this time it was Roddick who won, Djokovic retiring in the fourth set citing ‘cramping and soreness in my whole body’. That made it eight retirements in less than four years for Djokovic. He may have had the charm to apologise and make up behind the scenes, but he was getting a reputation as someone who didn’t have the stomach for the fight or, more cynically, who preferred to deny his opponent the winning shot by retiring before the end of the match. He was asked in the press conference after that Australian Open retirement whether he needed to perhaps develop a greater trust in his body, so he could play through physical niggles a little more. Djokovic replied,

  I mean, it’s easy for you
to say. If you come into my body, I’ll be more than happy to hear what you think about playing. But I’m a professional tennis player for a couple of years now. There is absolutely no question about whether I have motivation and will and desire to continue the match and defend my title. There is absolutely no doubt that I have it in me. My mind wanted me to continue. I could have stopped even before in the end of the second set because I felt really bad. I continued playing, thinking that something could help me out, maybe a treatment and things like that. But it just kept coming back.

  History records that over the next two years, Djokovic turned his fitness and health round, to the point where he won three of the four majors in 2011 and outlasted Nadal in a remarkable five-hour, 53-minute final of the Australian Open in January 2012. It’s therefore easy to assume there was a turning point, a toughening-up of his attitude towards fitness, health and lasting out matches somewhere in 2009 or 2010 that proved the key to his ascent to the top of the world rankings. But it wasn’t quite like that. If anything, what happened in 2009–10 was that he finally got on top of a series of health issues that had held him back to a greater or lesser extent since he had first started playing.