by Chris Bowers
Perhaps another reason why the tone doesn’t feel right is not just its inconsistency with Djokovic but that it makes out that the gluten intolerance was the silver bullet that took him from a failure to a world-beater. It wasn’t quite like that. He was world No. 3 even with the gluten, he had been Australian Open champion in 2008 and there may have been other elements that helped him move from Federer and Nadal’s shadow to the undisputed world No. 1. The fact that he finished the match against Tsonga was also of significance – he learned not to give up, even if he felt like dead meat for his opponent. His coach Marian Vajda has said Djokovic started to hit his forehand harder around this time. And it was surely no coincidence that his all-conquering year of 2011 came immediately after Serbia had won the Davis Cup – as the standard-bearer of a proud nation, that team triumph was also a key to unlocking his potential (see page 209).
There’s no doubt that identifying the gluten intolerance was a massive boost for Djokovic the tennis player, and it could well have implications for the restaurant culture in Serbia. The ‘Novak’ restaurants now offer gluten-free menu options, something of a rarity in Serbia but probably something that will be copied by other eating establishments. Yet it seems wiser to view the diet as a significant piece in a jigsaw puzzle, rather than the sole key. In a puzzle, certain pieces seem highly significant but the puzzle can’t be completed without all the pieces.
Such was Djokovic’s feel-good factor after working with Cetojevic that the good doctor began travelling with him to tournaments. During the year he was part of the entourage, Djokovic won the Davis Cup, the Australian Open, Wimbledon and reached No. 1 in the rankings. At that point, after the Wimbledon triumph, Cetojevic stopped travelling. He says he was getting sick of the travel – ‘I don’t like hotels and all that rubbish, and all the waiting around’ – and he’d achieved his aim, so it was a natural time to stop working with Djokovic. Vajda was quoted as saying there had been ‘differences of opinion’ with Cetojevic but nothing has ever been made of them, and the fact that Djokovic brought out the book that gives massive prominence to Cetojevic suggests they parted on good terms. Cetojevic still speaks incredibly highly of both Djokovic and Vajda.
The culmination in Djokovic’s battle to overcome his array of health impediments came in a 48-hour period at the end of January 2012. After beating Andy Murray in four hours, 50 minutes to reach the Australian Open final as Friday night became Saturday morning, Djokovic had to return at 7.30pm on the Sunday to face Nadal in the final. That final ran for five hours, 53 minutes and Djokovic recovered from 2-4 adrift in the final set. This was the quitter, the man who was always calling the trainer at the slightest sniff. There was always something inconsistent between his iron-will determination and his fragility in the big matches. Finally, the inconsistency was resolved. Roddick’s sarcasm, though understandable, had been misplaced – Djokovic was not ‘the most courageous guy of all time’, he was just cautiously trying to get his health right. Perhaps Roddick can thank his lucky stars that he never faced Djokovic in full health.
CHAPTER TEN
THE CHAMPION MUST COME FROM WITHIN
From the vantage point of 28 January 2008, Djokovic looked to have launched himself on a career as a Grand Slam champion and permanent front-line favourite for every tournament he entered. Yet with the benefit of hindsight, he was not to leave that particular launch pad for another three years. During that period he was the undisputed world No. 3 – albeit under growing challenge from Andy Murray – but could never break through Federer’s and Nadal’s stranglehold.
Soon after that Australian Open, it transpired that Federer had been suffering from mononucleosis or glandular fever. He had even spent a night in a Sydney hospital the week before the Open and his participation was in grave doubt. The fact that he reached the semi-finals and came through a gruelling 10–8 fifth-set win against Janko Tipsarevic in the third round have led some to wonder whether he really did have mononucleosis at all. He maintains he did, but whether it was that particular virus or something milder, Djokovic was clearly helped by playing a below-best Federer. The fact that, in the subsequent 11 majors, Djokovic reached just one final and four semi-finals suggests his 2008 Australian Open title was a positive blip in a gradual upward trend but that he was still far from the finished object.
He was after all still only 20; younger than Roger Federer had been when he won his first major. Nenad Zimonjic says, ‘When Novak won the Australian Open, he was still very young, he wasn’t really strong physically at the time and his serve still had the habit of breaking down.’ The result was a 2008 that promised more than it was ever likely to deliver – he won another five titles over the 18 months after his Australian Open triumph, plus a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics that seemed to mean a lot to him. But it was a period of consolidation, rather than a surge forward.
One of those five titles was the inaugural Serbian Open in Belgrade in April 2009. It was a triumph for his country and his family, given that his family was behind Serbia’s first tour-level tournament. The title forms a nice pair with the Futures title he won at Red Star Belgrade, his first professional tournament victory. But the Serbian Open proved a short-lived triumph, given that the tournament faded badly after that first year and disappeared from the calendar three years later.
At the start of 2009 he had switched racket companies, moving from the Wilson frame with which he had won the Australian Open to a Head frame. Switching rackets is always somewhat risky, as the racket is the single most personal tool in a tennis professional’s bag and some players opt for a lucrative deal, only to find they lose their confidence on the big points – for example the Australian Pat Cash won Wimbledon in 1987 and was runner-up at the 1988 Australian Open, both with a Prince racket, but had switched to Yonex by mid-1988 and was never the same again (although some of that was down to injuries). While he was no doubt amply rewarded in financial terms, Djokovic had played with a Head racket in his junior days, so it wasn’t a completely new frame-maker for him. It took him several months to be completely comfortable with his new racket, and during those months there were plenty who were happy to suggest he had gone for the money over the best interests of his tennis. For him, that time was an investment in adjusting to a weapon with which he could conquer the world.
And yet by the middle of 2009, he himself and those around him were beginning to wonder where the next surge was going to come from. In May his ranking had slipped to fourth as Andy Murray joined the big three, which meant he was seeded fourth for the French Open. He lost to Philipp Kohlschreiber in the third round of the French and to Tommy Haas in the quarter-finals of Wimbledon. Neither are embarrassing defeats against players who, on a given day, can be the equal of the world’s best players, but they were hardly the results of a player on course to break the Federer-Nadal duopoly.
So in July 2009 Djokovic and Vajda brought another voice into their team. ‘This is the good thing about Novak,’ says Zimonjic, ‘he’s not afraid of trying something different, he wants to improve, he wants to be the best he can be. He could easily have said, “Listen, I’m playing in a time when there are the two best players of all time and I’m happy to be No. 3 in the world.” But no, he said he wanted to get better, to beat Roger and Rafa. And he became No. 1 in the world with them around. He beat them in the big matches on the biggest stages; he won the Grand Slams with them there. That shows how good he is.’
The person he brought in was Todd Martin. The tall, studious, softly spoken American was an interesting choice – he had twice reached the final of a major, losing to Pete Sampras in Melbourne in 1994 and to Andre Agassi in New York five years later, but was perhaps better known for blowing a 5–1 advantage in the final set of his Wimbledon semi-final against MaliVai Washington in 1996. He was regarded as a likeable man who played somewhat dour tennis and with a match temperament that could be a little flaky (although that has to be taken with some relativity, as he won eight tour titles and was a mainstay for the
US Davis Cup team for a decade).
‘They felt they needed someone with a stronger playing background, with experience in the latter stages of Grand Slams,’ says Martin. ‘Someone who played aggressively and someone to provide an element of calm into the relatively emotional mix of parents, agent, coach, physio and player. It came at a time when Marian [Vajda] wanted to spend a little more time at home. They took me on as a general consultant more than anything else, but I was at some tournaments when Marian was at home. That made some people ask if I’d taken over from Marian but I was at home when he looked after Novak.’
Martin was instantly struck by Djokovic’s determination and inner confidence. He tells a story from August 2009, when the two were having a chat with a player who was no longer on the tour and who hadn’t had a particularly distinguished career. ‘The conversation was about the amount of support that federations provide,’ he says, ‘and this one fellow was bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t had the support he felt he needed. When we got on to the support younger players might get, Novak said, “But the champion must come from within,” or words to that effect – he said it very well. I’m a huge believer of that and I used that line on him a few times because, at that point in his career, I felt he wasn’t allowing himself to be the champion. He’s obviously crossed that bridge since then.’
For some reason, Martin’s appointment was picked up by the media as being a case of the American being brought in to help with the Djokovic serve. Martin says that’s ‘a complete misrepresentation’, as his role was more general, but the serve did become a central feature of his working relationship with Djokovic.
He recalls, of his first meeting with Team Djokovic,
I went to Canada to meet them and was alarmed at what I saw with the serve. If you look at video from 2006–7, he had a beautiful service motion – way better than it is now. And he serves very well now – I actually think he serves better than he did then but his serve was a very languid, fluid, beautiful motion. It sounded like he was doing it to protect his shoulder but I have a bit of video that’s shocking – it shows all the different things he was doing wrong, but really, at the core of it, the most important issue needing to be resolved was the fact that his elbow stayed straight until the very last second of the forward and upward swing, so it was never consistently loaded. One thing Novak does well in every element of his game is get loaded, he’s ready to pull the trigger, but with his serve he just wasn’t. Because of all the nonsense, if something goes awry and you try to figure it out with all other stuff, rhythm starts to be a really significant issue.
As a new coach, as someone who was working alongside the primary coach, Martin felt he needed to bide his time before even broaching the subject with Vajda. He encouraged Vajda to address it during the off-season at the end of 2009, but for some reason there was a conscious decision not to, and in the early months of 2010 Djokovic’s serve was something of a basket case. He didn’t serve well at the Australian Open, where he lost in the quarter-finals to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga – Djokovic puts one horrendous double fault to concede serve in the fifth set down to the after-effects of throwing up (see page 173) but he wasn’t serving well anyway – and his serving at his next-but-one tournament in Dubai was a disaster. Yet he won the title! ‘The technique was pretty bad,’ says Nenad Zimonjic, ‘but that showed how tough he was mentally. For me, his biggest win was in winning the Dubai tournament in 2010. It’s extremely fast there, the ball flies, and he was double-faulting all the time. But he was breaking guys five or six times per match because he couldn’t hold his own serve, which meant his game was improving a lot except the serve. Once he got back the rhythm on the serve, once he got back better technique, he was even stronger all round. That made him better than ever. Most guys would have given up [and] said, “Oh, my serve is so bad,” and not have fought, but he fought through it and became a better player because of it.’
In late February Martin asked Djokovic if he was ready to address the serve issues. ‘It was an issue for him every day,’ he says, ‘and he said yes. So we spent the next two weeks working on it through Indian Wells and Miami. And then we stopped.’
Much as Djokovic has many admirers for his willingness to take on short-term external help, many of those admirers are wary because of the suddenness with which some of the help has been dropped. Like others before him, Martin was phoned by Djokovic’s agent and told his services were no longer required. ‘I suspect his dad encouraged the end of the relationship,’ he says, ‘but I didn’t have much to do with him. I had dinner with Srdjan once or twice and we were together in London for the ATP Finals, and maybe one other time, but largely I had little or no contact with him, mainly because of the language barrier. I do think that Srdjan was part of it all but in a different way. I think that there was a transition occurring, an establishment of some autonomy in Novak’s own life. I think his existence was dysfunctional at the time and I think I was collateral damage.’
That’s a fair enough assessment from Martin’s perspective, but from Team Djokovic’s perspective, Martin simply didn’t fit. When news emerged in April 2010 that Martin had left the entourage, Djokovic’s main comment to the media was that ‘it just didn’t work out’. In an interview with ESPN just over a year later, Vajda said, ‘There was bad communication; it was really counterproductive. He went down with the serve; he couldn’t serve last year. It was terrible. Everything was tough. Novak never had the impression to [avoid] work but the communication was different. Todd was a big player and also wanted to try something new. But Novak was all set up, he only [needed] small improvements.’ And in a later interview with the Daily Telegraph, Vajda said, ‘When Todd came it was counter-productive. Somehow Todd didn’t recognise Novak as a holistic person.’
Despite being fired, Martin remains on very relaxed terms with Djokovic and there appears no bitterness on either side about the way it ended. He says,
I think I helped with the diagnosis [of the serve problem] but wasn’t given an opportunity to see through the cure. I had a pretty clear vision for what I felt he needed to be doing and now he starts with a bent elbow and he keeps it bent throughout his motion. But while the end of our working relationship was bizarre at the time, I walked away feeling like every coach’s primary objective should be to become unnecessary. I didn’t become unnecessary during my time with Novak, but I’m sure I’ve planted a few seeds that have contributed to my being unnecessary. I don’t think anyone from the outside looking in would have come in and said much different to what I said. They’d have said, ‘Eventually, you’ll have to play with some force.’ The first time I hit with Novak I was blown away by how heavy his ball was and then I’d watch him compete and he’d hit the ball 10 per cent slower than whoever he was playing. These days he goes out and lets the guys have it. That’s effectively made him significantly more offensive than anything to do with volleying better. You don’t have to volley better to be able to come to the net with more authority.
Looking at the three years between Djokovic winning the Australian Open and his annus mirabilis of 2011, it’s tempting to look for a turning point. The match with Tsonga in January 2010 is an obvious one, as is Serbia’s Davis Cup triumph in December 2010. But Djokovic himself says that, if there was a distinct point after which things really moved forward for him, it was the French Open and Wimbledon in 2010. ‘There were a few particular moments that I would say were turning points,’ he said in 2013, ‘but probably Wimbledon 2010. Since that tournament, I started playing much better, more confident. The first six months of 2010 I was going through a lot of health issues, I wasn’t able to [get] so many great results, I lost a lot of confidence but managed to come back.’
It’s a point made by Nenad Zimonjic. ‘After he made the semis at Wimbledon, that was the point when he got the confidence back. Then he started to play better. We noticed it at the Davis Cup quarter-final against Croatia a week later. He was under a lot of pressure, his serve still wasn’t working well but
he came through it. It was like a final couple of struggles that made him where he is now – everything from struggling for funding in his teenage years to his serve breaking down, it all made him stronger.’
The shock to the system that galvanised him into an extra level of determination came when he lost to Juergen Melzer in the French Open quarter-finals. He led the 29-year-old Austrian by two sets to love, then had a break midway through the final set before losing it 6–4 in four and a quarter hours. Again there were signs of breathlessness, described on the day as ‘hayfever-like symptoms’, and there was one controversial line-call in the final game that went against Djokovic after the umpire inspected a mark in the clay. But the sense was that he was a round ahead of himself, preparing to face Rafael Nadal in the semis before dealing with the obstinate Melzer.
Djokovic should, perhaps, have reached the Wimbledon final four weeks later. After coming back from two-sets-to-one down to beat the diminutive Olivier Rochus in the first round, he had dropped just one set en route to the semi-finals, that against the former champion Lleyton Hewitt, who was still a top-30 player. He then faced Tomas Berdych, the man who had put out the defending champion Roger Federer in the previous round. Djokovic thought his steadier groundstrokes would win the match for him but he was too conservative and the big-hitting Czech took advantage. Still Djokovic may well have won if he’d converted one of the two set points he had in the second set tie-break – he had come back from 2–6 down, saving four set points five times (at 5–6, they replayed a point Djokovic had clearly won with a lob). Once he lost the tie-break 11–9, the game was up and Berdych won in straight sets.