by Chris Bowers
It was Jelena Gencic who first noticed that young Novak always got hay fever in the spring, when the flowers were first in bloom. His matches on clay were very difficult. ‘I took him to many doctors,’ she said, ‘and one said he had a deviated septum in the nose. So his mother and father took him to have an operation to correct the deviation. After that it was much better. I also said, “Don’t practise near ambrosia [rag weed],” as those are the flowers that set him off.’ It appears therefore that Djokovic had two operations on his nose, one prompted by Gencic when he was a young boy, the other prompted by Piatti when he was 18. Some of the ailments Gencic claims to have spotted sound like something out of an old wives’ epicurean handbook. ‘When he was feeling very bad in Budapest, when he was playing a challenger tournament,’ she said, ‘there was a Marza [cat’s flower] by the court and he reacted, so they asked me what to do. I said, “Spray him with salt water from the Adriatic Sea.”’
More seriously, Gencic was worried that Djokovic never ate enough and, right up to her death in 2013, she was worried he was still not eating as much as he needed to. She claimed to have had lunch with him when he was an adult and would say, ‘Nole, Nole, come on, eat.’ And he would say, ‘Jeca, don’t tell people but I now eat all the Cevapcici.’ (Cevapcici is a typical Serbian/Balkan meat dish, probably of Turkish origin.) She also took him to a homoeopath, who advised him not to eat gluten. It took until he was well into his twenties before another doctor suggested cutting out gluten, which was one of the turning points in improving his health. And it took until he was 18 for a coach to realise that his eyes weren’t good enough and needed some assistance.
In other words, here was a boy with superb motor skills, a natural talent for tennis and a burning desire to be the best in the world but with a body that, in several important respects, was not playing ball. Many people who observed Djokovic on his rise to the top say this led to a cautiousness that was behind many of the trainer and retirement episodes that so irritated spectators, journalists and other players.
Nenad Zimonjic, who as Serbia’s Davis Cup player-captain was the first to call Djokovic into the Serbian Davis Cup squad, says, ‘Novak always had the No. 1 spot in the world in mind. He was thinking about winning the Grand Slams and the big tournaments, and he always thought about his health and his body, so he didn’t want to push the limits when he felt like there was a slight chance of him getting injured. Finding out the problem with the allergies and the gluten, and developing his fitness level to compete at this high level, was a slow process, but he improved with everything. When he won the Australian Open for the first time he was still very young, he wasn’t really strong physically at the time.’
It’s a view shared by Djokovic’s good friend and former stablemate under Riccardo Piatti, Ivan Ljubicic. ‘He became stronger, physically. And the more you go through it physically, the stronger you are mentally. I don’t see him as a different person, I see him just treating certain situations differently but it’s still him. He’s overcareful with himself and sometimes people think he’s trying to fake or create something, when he’s just trying to take good care of himself. Sometimes that’s misinterpreted. I never think he faked injury, it’s just that sometimes he overreacted in certain circumstances – that, I think, is OK.’
Yet even if such caution is a legitimate explanation for Djokovic’s retirements and calls for the trainer, they weren’t necessarily doing him any good. In early 2007 he sought the help of Mark Woodforde, the former doubles great and Australian Open singles semi-finalist, largely to help with ‘transitioning’ from the baseline to the net but also to gain from his experience in big matches. Woodforde was coaching Djokovic when he reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon in 2007. ‘He was starting to realise he needed to spend more time on the physical,’ Woodforde says. ‘Everything was in comparison to Rafa and Roger – he kept asking, “How can they last five sets?”, “How can they back up?” He’d been experiencing all these great results in the Slams but he was breaking down in the quarters and the semis because, physically, he was not at the same level he’d been at on day one.’
Having played five matches in a rain-affected Wimbledon 2007, which wiped out much of his recovery time late in the tournament, Djokovic developed a blister on his left little toe, which became infected. Woodforde explains,
He had retired a few times and that had called him to doubt his own integrity, but when he reached the semis at Wimbledon, he had this toe problem. I saw the toe and it was horrific – I hate to think what it was like to walk on. He was even talking about not playing the match against Nadal because he could barely walk and he hadn’t slept. I wanted to implore the whole team that it was important to finish. I told Nole, ‘If you keep going with this pattern that if you can’t play you stop, you don’t know what state the other guy is in – he may be going through the same trek as you are and he could fall over at any minute.’ So I said you have to give yourself a chance. The accumulation of matches had certainly made the toe worse, there was a thought process going on in his head: ‘I can’t compete, and if I can’t compete to win the match, don’t play.’ Whereas I said you’ve got to go out and play, at least try – this is the semifinals of Wimbledon, you can’t not play! I think he had a painkilling injection, so he did play.
More than that, he won the first set, but once Nadal realised Djokovic couldn’t really move, he took over, and with the Spaniard leading 4–1 in the third set, Djokovic threw in the towel.
Despite his efforts to get Djokovic to take to the court for that match, Woodforde copped a lot of flak from his fellow Aussies. ‘I had friends coming to me saying, “How can you keep working with someone who retires in the semi-finals of Wimbledon? What are you saying to the guy? How could you let him do that?” Our philosophy in Australia was: when you step out on the court, you’re fit. You don’t stop. I had to explain that it wasn’t as easy as you think. I could see this focus – he was asking, “What are Roger and Rafa doing?” because I have to do a little bit extra. But he wasn’t ready at that time.’
Another two retirements came in early 2008. Having just won the Australian Open, he was feted in Belgrade, turning out on the balcony of the presidential residence to greet several thousand cheering fans. For some reason, on a cold early February day, he appeared in the biting winter air wearing only a T-shirt and light trousers. Whether that caused the cold that afflicted him when he arrived in Moscow a week later, to spearhead Serbia’s first-ever Davis Cup World Group match against Russia, is not totally clear – the whole Serbian team was ill that week and a far-from-100 per cent Nenad Zimonjic had to play singles on the first day having not played singles for years. Djokovic sat out the opening day but partnered Zimonjic to a win in the doubles. Then, needing to beat Nikolay Davydenko to take the tie to an unlikely live fifth rubber, Djokovic played two outstanding sets, only to drop the third. At that point he retired, citing his cold. There had been no indication to his captain, Bogdan Obradovic, or the chef d’équipe Nikki Pilic that he was thinking of quitting – he just stopped. Whether he had internally agreed to play three sets and then stop, nobody knows. But it confirmed his image as someone who might give up if you could keep him there long enough.
Against Federer in the Monte Carlo semi-finals, he quit because of ‘breathing problems’ after five games of the second set. It led to another round of critical comments and probably prepared the ground for his spat with Roddick at the US Open five months later.
If there was a moment when Djokovic grasped that there was something to be gained by not quitting, it came at the Australian Open in 2010. A year after his quarter-final abdication against Roddick, he played another quarter-final, one he lost in five sets to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. This time he had every reason for retiring because he was suffering severe stomach spasms that came early in the fourth set when he was leading by two sets to one. At one stage he took an impromptu bathroom break when he wasn’t allowed to. The referee Wayne McKewen signalled to the umpire that
it was OK because McKewen knew that, if he hadn’t let Djokovic rush to the bathroom, there might have been an embarrassing accident on court. Djokovic threw up in the locker room and returned to finish the match, losing it 6–1 in the fifth as his strength waned. History records that was the last time he lost a match in Melbourne until his defeat to Stanislas Wawrinka in the 2014 quarter-finals.
The man in Djokovic’s corner at that Australian Open was not Marian Vajda but Todd Martin. Martin, a former Australian and US Open runner-up, had been brought in as a consultant to help Djokovic deal with big matches at the sharp end of Grand Slam tournaments and, with Vajda wanting to spend a bit more time at home, Martin looked after Djokovic on that trip down-under. Of the Tsonga match in January 2010, Martin says,
In my opinion, he had a responsibility. He was still able to play, to compete, but it was more important than that. In order for him to get to where he is now, he had to cross a few psychological barriers, and one of them is certainly dealing with the heat of Australia, the cardiovascular challenges at the extreme. First and foremost, he had to look in the mirror and say, ‘Do I want to be third for ever or do I want to push this?’ My belief, though I don’t know this for sure, is that he answered in the affirmative and he started doing more work. I think I caught him at an interesting time in his career: one, because he was running into some challenges after a very steady and steep rise in the game, but also at a time when, as a child, he had worked very hard at his craft and this was his opportunity to cruise a little bit. It was really easy for him to be No. 3, he defended so well, he didn’t have to learn how to play other elements of the game, but how much work did he want to put in? How much off-court discipline did he want to put in so he put his best foot forward every time he went out on the court? When he got out on the court, he did great. He poured his heart and soul into every match. But that’s the easy part. You have to pour your heart and soul into your practice and into the regimentation of the rest of your day – those are the challenges, those are really big challenges that the great do very gracefully. I’d be very surprised if he’s not practising more than he was when I was with him, if he’s not showing better discipline of diet, of sleep, all the things that people watching on TV don’t see. He’s certainly dealing with the heat of Australia wonderfully now.
But it was not just an attitude shift on Djokovic’s part that came about during that match. On the island of Cyprus, a somewhat alternative Serbian doctor, Igor Cetojevic, had a lull in his schedule and turned on the television. It was mid-morning and Cetojevic found live tennis, Djokovic playing Tsonga on the Australian Open night session. Cetojevic was no tennis fan but had been told by Serbian friends to have a look at this Djokovic guy. Watching the match, Cetojevic was struck by how the commentator kept saying of his country’s national hero, ‘Novak is struggling with his asthma again.’
Cetojevic, a doctor trained in allopathic medicine who has moved into more holistic, alternative approaches to health, says he just couldn’t see how Djokovic’s problems could be asthma. ‘From my observations and experience with Chinese traditional medicine,’ he said, ‘I could see that asthma was not the issue here. I know that generally most asthma symptoms appear in the morning – and Novak’s match was in the evening. Also, if he really had an asthmatic condition, he would not have been able to play two good sets before the breathing difficulties appeared. I suspected that, in Novak’s case, his breathing problem resulted from an imbalance in his digestive system, specifically from an accumulation of toxins in his large intestine. In traditional Chinese medicine, the lungs are paired with the large intestine.’
The person who had suggested to Cetojevic that he look at Djokovic had links to the player and initiated contact. The result was that Djokovic and Cetojevic met in July 2010, when Serbia travelled to Split for a Davis Cup local derby quarter-final against Croatia. Cetojevic did some kinesiological muscle testing and, for confirmation, wired Djokovic up to a ‘biofeedback device’ which is claimed to measure stress, environmental toxins, brainwaves and food allergies. From those tests, Cetojevic concluded that Djokovic had an intolerance to gluten and, to a lesser extent, to dairy and tomatoes – just what the son of pizzeria owners wanted to hear! (Some people, including Djokovic himself, wonder if eating large amounts of pizza as a child brought on the intolerances.) It confirmed the finding of the homoeopath Gencic had taken Djokovic to much earlier, which Cetojevic knew nothing about until contacted for this book. Cetojevic put the player on a diet of gluten-free cereal, fresh berries, nuts and herbal tea. The most immediate result of the new diet was a loss of weight, and Djokovic didn’t exactly have much weight to lose. But he persisted with the regime and the weight came back. Djokovic also adopted some breathing techniques Cetojevic taught him, both for stressful situations in matches and to enable him to get a good night’s sleep.
It should be pointed out that, in traditional allopathic medical circles, such methods are highly speculative and Cetojevic is a controversial figure. The allopathic world would baulk at such a non-medical diagnosis, as well as his website advertising ‘Energetic Medicine’. But while the mainstream medical world views Cetojevic’s methods as ‘alternative’, they are very much at the respected end of the alternative-health spectrum. Kinesiological muscle testing is widely used by kinesiologists, acupuncturists, physiotherapists and other practitioners, and there are plenty of medical professionals who have come to the conclusion that wheat and dairy can be the cause of all sorts of bodily inefficiencies. When asked whether Djokovic found his diagnosis strange, Cetojevic chuckled, saying, ‘I’m a strange doctor anyway, I take different approaches to most doctors. The problem is that people are tuned to think that food can’t buy you health – it’s medicine that buys you health – when that’s wrong. Health comes through eating the right food.’
Cetojevic certainly believes all top-level sports people should eliminate gluten, or at least not eat any too soon before they do their sport. ‘It’s like putting dirty fuel into a Ferrari,’ he says. ‘You can do it and the car will still run but not very well. Gluten is sticky, it slows you down. A lot of tennis players still start the day of a big match with croissants and double coffee!’ In traditional medical circles, his blanket rejection of gluten is at best speculative and at worst quack therapy. Yet energy exists in various forms, Chinese medicine has been around for thousands of years, and with wheat being genetically modified and mass produced for the world to consume, who’s to say a lot of people aren’t gluten-intolerant who are not picked up by traditional medical methods? The fact that a number of people with wheat intolerances can eat spelt, an ancient form of wheat that is not mass-produced and is genetically different to conventional wheat, suggests that the human body may be fine with certain types of wheat, or with high-quality wheat, but labours with mass-produced, genetically modified wheat.
This is not the place to get into too much speculation about the nutritional and medical properties of wheat. However, what is beyond doubt is that Djokovic felt a lot stronger as a result of Cetojevic’s regime. That could be because he was genuinely gluten-intolerant, it could be purely psychosomatic, it could be a mixture of the diet and better sleep, or it could be for tennis reasons – for Djokovic to lead Serbia to the Davis Cup title in 2010 freed him up, allowing him to play the sublime tennis that saw him win three of the four majors and totally dominate tennis in 2011. Any scientist will tell you that, if you tackle a problem with two or more approaches, you can never be entirely sure what has solved it.
This is important to remember in the light of a book Djokovic brought out in mid-2013 in which he talks about the discovery of his gluten intolerance. Entitled Serve to Win, it’s a 160-page paperback that is partly an explanation of the problems gluten causes and partly a recipe book, with a few of Djokovic’s life experiences thrown in for illustration. Even allowing for its rather lame title, it’s an unsatisfying book, largely because you wonder who wrote it. Djokovic’s name is on the cover and no ghost-writer
is credited, but the ‘voice’ of the narrative is simply not Djokovic’s – it’s rather breathless, whereas he is a very calm speaker, and some of the corny references to tennis in passages about nutrition would never have come from him (wheat and dairy are at one stage listed as ‘the mixed doubles team from hell’ – ouch!). There is a lot of research quoted but it’s almost all American and Djokovic has never lived in America, and he certainly didn’t have time to do this much research in the period when the book was written, because he was playing a punishing schedule of tennis tournaments.
The book has a foreword by Dr William Davis, a medical doctor and the father of Lauren Davis, an American player making her way on the women’s tour who cracked the top 100 at the end of 2012. Bill Davis has written a best-selling book about weaning yourself off wheat. The voice in the foreword is very similar to the voice in the narrative, which leads one to wonder whether Davis wrote the book and put it into the first person for Djokovic to approve, with a few of Djokovic’s childhood and tennis details thrown in to personalise it. You could hardly blame him – if you’re battling for your theory to be recognised and are up against the multi-million-dollar multinational food industry (and especially the multi-million-dollar agribusiness that produces modern wheat in large quantities), you would seize on a top-level high-profile sportsman who exemplifies your message. If Djokovic was happy to put his name to the book, well, why not? He will, no doubt, have profited financially and felt good about spreading the word about his good fortune. Or the real author may be Stephen Perrine, who’s listed in the acknowledgements section as the ‘editor and collaborator’ and who did a number of interviews with Djokovic while the book was being prepared. Whoever really wrote it, the book has some useful information about why gluten might be bad for you (no two people are alike, so some people may be fine with it) and how you can avoid eating it if you need to. It just feels a little dishonest because the guy whose name is on the cover clearly didn’t write it.