The Sporting Statesman

by Chris Bowers

  When Jelena Gencic died, Djokovic talked about continuing or following up on her legacy. The word ‘legacy’, when applied to Gencic, could be taken to mean any number of things but the obvious area would be in tennis development. Even now, his passion for both the game and his country means he’s always willing for the Serbian juniors to practise with him. The fact that, as world No. 1, he had a number of negotiations with leading figures in tennis’s governing bodies means he has had an apprenticeship in how the game is run, with the chance to develop his own thoughts and ideas as to how it might be better run.

  The television commentator Nebojsa Viskovic says, ‘He’s a man with such a big field of interest, I just can’t imagine what could fill him in the future. When I look at Vlade Divac, he was the greatest basketball player in Yugoslavia, now he’s president of the Serbian Olympic Committee – I could never see him doing that during his playing days. So who knows what Novak could do?’ Djokovic himself has spoken admiringly about the responsibility Divac has taken on, which doesn’t of itself mean he will look to do something similar, but it’s not a massive leap of the imagination to see him as president of the Serbian Tennis Federation, the Serbian Olympic Committee, or something of that ilk.

  His popularity in Serbia and the respect his compatriots have for him means a political career is always a possibility. ‘If he’s going to participate in politics, I’m going to help him,’ says the former president Boris Tadic (conveniently overlooking the possibility that Djokovic might not want his help – Tadic isn’t held in the highest regard among Serbia’s chattering classes). Tadic adds, ‘If he ran for president, he would win.’ He would now, but politics is a much more complicated business than just milking your own popularity. Alliances have to be formed, sometimes with unlikely allies; programmes have to be formulated that are distinctive enough to catch the public imagination but appeal to a wide enough section of the electorate that they can be carried through; events can overtake the best-laid plans; and the media has to be managed. In an era of 24-hour news coverage and the rumour mill that is social media and the broader Internet, managing information is crucial. Many an honest politician sets out with the aim of saying things straight and giving honest answers, and then realises that this approach risks conceding the political agenda to whomever is asking the questions; so they clam up, become careful with their utterances, and are soon as colourless as all their political colleagues. Is Djokovic capable of playing that particular game? Does he even want to? He says no, though that could change.

  Dusan Vemic, who has spent a lot of time with Djokovic on the road in recent years, believes Djokovic is aware of the pitfalls of politics. ‘I don’t think he will get into politics,’ Vemic says, ‘I don’t think he’s interested, but if he did go into politics, it would probably be with a big idea with which he wants to make a difference.’

  And when Dejan Petrovic says, ‘Nole can be like Tito, doing the job of uniting people,’ he may well be right, but how? He would need a role and it’s hard to see – at the moment – what that role could be.

  Viskovic appears to be on a similar wavelength to Petrovic and Vemic. ‘He’s doing for Serbia what nobody could do,’ he says. ‘If he ran for president, he’d win it 100 per cent. But his family is down in the public’s estimations because they represent Serbia in a very different way. I think it helped him that he had to tell them to calm down; their behaviour in the crowd was a disgrace. The people of Serbia have had enough of ugly things, they just want something nice to happen – Novak is nice but his family is not nice. So yes, he could be president, but it would be much smarter to be an ambassador.’

  So what of an ambassadorial or diplomatic role? It’s important to stress that the terms are used loosely here because the role of a country’s ambassador to a foreign capital, or of a diplomat representing a government in transnational negotiations, is a very precise and constrained one. Djokovic is already an ambassador for his clothing and racket companies, and there are doubtless hundreds of Serbian (and non-Serbian) firms that would be delighted to send him on the road to represent them and put in a good word for them. But would that really satisfy someone of boundless energy and an active but focused mind? It’s hard to think it would.

  In 1980 the then US president Jimmy Carter appointed the former world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali as a special US envoy to Africa. Ali was to go to a number of African countries and encourage them to join the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest at the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. It would be easy to see Djokovic taking on such a task, especially if there was a children element involved that would dovetail with his foundation’s work, or a peace element that would allow him to say – as he did at the 2013 US Open – that he’s ‘totally against any kind of weapon, any kind of air strike or missile attack’. But anything like that would be a short-term assignment. It’s easier to see him taking on an international charitable role, or possibly even a United Nations function that would be a development of his work as a Unicef ambassador.

  ‘I think an ambassadorial function would be possible for a lot of the guys who have played tennis,’ says the twice Grand Slam runner-up Todd Martin.

  It’s a global game. At one moment you have to fight like a dog against somebody competing for the same prize. The next moment you have to share a locker room with that same person. The next moment you have to schmooze at a cocktail party with people you don’t speak the same language as, or whatever it is. These are the talents that go into being something of that ambassadorial nature. Many players can learn the stuff that’s necessary to do their job, but there are a few like Roger and Novak who are plenty smart enough to learn all the wider stuff.

  Asked what role he sees for himself after his top-level playing days are over, Djokovic appears to be leaving all options open when he says, ‘I will be trying to give as much as I can to my country, but not in a form of a politician. I think there are many ways to help, and currently I choose to do it through my charity, the Novak Djokovic Foundation.’

  Most of the world’s top athletes have charitable foundations these days, prompting cynics to wonder whether these are motivated more by reasons of tax advantages than by genuine concern for the wider world. It’s a difficult question to answer – if a government claims less in tax because some citizens are paying a certain amount of their income into a charitable foundation, the donors don’t benefit personally; in effect, they simply decide how to spend some of the tax they would have had to pay anyway. Does that allow us to judge how strong their charitable motives really are?

  With Djokovic’s foundation, the motivation is somewhat closer to heart. In a ‘letter’ outlining the rationale behind the foundation, he writes, ‘I’m coming from a war torn country, a place where many kids do not dare to dream big. I was blessed to have the support of my whole family throughout childhood. They believed in me and dreamed with me, all the way. Today, I have realised my childhood dream. It is very important for me to start building my philanthropic legacy now, while I’m young and have a lot of people’s attention. I want to share the focus that is on me with the work of my foundation and help many kids to fulfil their dreams. They can learn from my example – many things are possible if we believe and work hard.’

  Djokovic started the ‘Novak Fund’ in 2007 – essentially a pot of money that could be used for all sorts of diverse projects, such as emergency relief efforts in areas that had suffered from fighting or extreme weather, grants for kids who needed medical treatment outside Serbia, travel grants for young players to go to tennis tournaments, and even donations to fund the upkeep of historic churches and monasteries. But in February 2012 he changed it into the Novak Djokovic Foundation (NDF), with his girlfriend Jelena Ristic as chief executive and a more specific focus on children, largely in Serbia but also around the world. In September 2011 Djokovic was named a Unicef ambassador – so are plenty of other athletes, but his role was specifically to help raise the awareness
of low enrolment rates in pre-school education in Serbia, given that Serbia has one of the lowest percentages of children in pre-school education (44 per cent).

  Out of this has arisen a trio of projects supported by the foundation that reflect the thinking of Friedrich Froebel, the 19th-century German educationalist who developed the theory that, if you meet a child’s needs in the ‘early years’ (which he defined as three to seven years old), they will by and large be able to deal with anything you throw at them after that. Froebel coined the term ‘Kindergarten’ out of his conviction that children under seven learn best by playing in the garden, and devotees of Froebel’s work tend to set up schools with low numbers of under-sevens and a strong focus on outdoor learning; they tend to be known as ‘small schools’. It’s easy to see how Djokovic’s belief in a child’s right to dream and Froebel’s care and attention up to age seven fit together, and one of the NDF projects is the ‘Skolica Zivota’, which best translates as ‘small school for life’. Djokovic says on his foundation’s website,

  The project has developed as an expression of our desire to encourage children to dream, and also inspire adults to do everything in their power to help kids realise those dreams. Kindergartens, parks and playgrounds are natural schools of life, where children play and learn through play, resolve situations, and make friends for life. We want those places to become something more – to become seedbeds of goodwill, the right values, activism, self-care, and caring concern for others. It is the best way to strengthen parents, professionals, local communities, and above all children; to regain their strength, self-confidence and faith in life; a belief that they can do something for themselves, their present and future. Only that way will new generations of responsible citizens emerge, of people who care about each other and the environment they live in.

  The ‘Skolica Zivota’ project currently assists four schools but the scope for it to help more is obviously immense.

  In parallel, Djokovic has recognised that a good small school in itself may not be enough to help children to dream, or to realise those dreams, if the child’s home life is not nurturing. That’s why the foundation is undertaking a major project jointly with Unicef and the Serbian government called ‘Supporting Families at Risk’. The aim is to prevent the separation of children from their families, by strengthening families to cope with crises so they can still provide their children with adequate care in a safe and stimulating environment. A team of ‘family outreach workers’ is working with 53 families encompassing 118 children. Ristic says,

  This service has been necessary in the social protection system for several reasons. First of all, our centres are overcrowded with families in need. Social workers simply do not have time for continual work to enable children to become stronger and modify their behaviour. They are working on 300 cases per year, and our staff will need two and a half years for this because attention and dedication, as well as time, are required for accomplishing the results. A child’s biological family is irreplaceable, and in most cases it has no alternative. Of course there are situations when there’s a threat to the life of a child and it must be removed from the family. But there are many more situations where families just need someone to direct them, to give a suggestion, to motivate them, take them to the doctor, provide documents, to enrol their child in kindergarten, to give them advice on how to overcome the situation. All those families must voluntarily agree to be included in the service. We are sure that after six months they will be much stronger.

  Interestingly, the third project of the trio is a children’s toy library in Kragujevac, which includes provision for Roma children, particularly vulnerable ones. The library lends out not just toys but material with inherent teaching characteristics. Given the way the Roma community has often been ostracised from Serbian society, this is not just a children’s welfare project but one that has an element of breaking down barriers caused by prejudice.

  ‘Our mission is to help children in disadvantaged communities to grow up, play and develop in stimulative and safe environments while learning to respect others and care for the environment,’ Djokovic says. ‘Many people around the world have recognised my foundation and joined us in our mission.’

  Although he relaunched the foundation in February 2012, it really got going at a fundraising dinner in New York in September 2012, which raised $1.4 million for early-years education. A week later he visited a Unicef kindergarten in the town of Lesnica, and a month after that he launched the initiative ‘Clothes for Smiles’ with his clothing supplier Uniqlo, a programme that aims to help nurture the dreams of children worldwide. For all this, he was recognised by the British homelessness charity Centrepoint, which awarded him its first Premier Award at the seniors’ tennis tournament at London’s Royal Albert Hall in December 2012. Djokovic received the award from Prince William, the heir-but-one to the British throne and a keen tennis fan who has watched matches at Wimbledon and the Australian Open.

  When Djokovic talks about his foundation, the word ‘dream’ is ever present in his vocabulary. ‘Let’s believe in their dreams together!’ he writes on the foundation’s website and, when he was appointed a Unicef ambassador, he said, ‘Through my work with Unicef, I want to help Serbian children realise their dreams. I want to help them understand that they have rights and that those rights should be protected. I want them to believe that anything is possible.’

  It’s almost as if these are the emotions that he can’t let out until the conclusion of a match; this is the idealism that is the counterweight to all the hard work he puts in on the practice court and in the gym. It is this side of Djokovic that makes so many people think he will end up in some way involved in a cause to change the world for the better. Dusan Vemic says, ‘He’s realising more and more that he’s a giving person, and I believe whatever he does in the future will reflect that idea of making a difference – I think he realises that he already makes a big difference in the lives of millions of people in this country, and many athletes look up to him around the world’

  Are we reading too much into Djokovic the person? Should we perhaps simply view him as a man whose passion is playing tennis, who does it so well he’s one of the world’s greatest, and that, as an intelligent human being, he takes an understandable interest in the rest of the world but that it’s no more than that? There’s a case for it, but it would almost certainly be selling him short.

  There are essentially three elements to Djokovic’s greatness. The first two are at play with all successful athletes, and other performers for that matter: natural abilty and dedication. Some people have all the natural ability but insufficient dedication, while others have modest ability but a blinding determination to succeed that takes them past more gifted rivals. Djokovic has both phenomenal natural talent and the drive to make the most of it. He needs both these attributes to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of today’s professional tennis. You can say the same for Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, and for top players from past eras and even for those players who fall just behind them in the rankings.

  But that determination – the single-mindedness needed to succeed in an environment where the slightest weakness is punished – leads to a crop of largely dull personalities. That is no criticism – if your life from the age of around six or seven is dominated by practice after school, and most weekends and summer holidays being consumed by tennis camps and tournaments, and you then have to subject yourself to a disciplined regime of fitness and tennis training for pretty much 52 weeks of the year, it’s not a recipe for well-roundedness. But every now and then a person comes through this brutal regime with the natural intelligence to take such a weird existence in their stride and get a sense of the world from it. They emerge with their personality intact, and that makes them seem so normal when they are anything but. Djokovic is one of these, and this is the third element of his greatness.

  He is not alone in this. His closest match is Roger Federer, who also combines natural
ability, a serious work ethic and a charming personality that manages to see the big picture. The relationship between Federer and Djokovic hasn’t always been smooth, but they have tremendous mutual respect for each other and any tension may stem from the fact that they are both remarkable sporting statesmen, both of them once-in-a-lifetime figures who happen to be around at the same time. Compliments for Federer and Djokovic imply no criticism of the other members of the phenomenal ‘big four’ of the current tennis era, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. Nadal’s inherent good nature and Murray’s quiet down-to-earthness make them equally admirable as people as well as athletes, and it’s possible that Murray may mature into someone of Federer’s and Djokvic’s intellectual stature. But for the moment, Federer and Djokovic are the seriously smart cookies who are more than just great sportsmen but international icons who transcend the boundaries of their sport and their respective countries.

  They also bear comparison with past eras. Rod Laver was the most successful player of the first period of ‘open’ tennis, but he had a quiet, understated personality that meant he was never more than a great sportsman. The same goes for Bjorn Borg, albeit with much greater star appeal than Laver ever had. Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe both transcended their sport, but their brash personalities always made them controversial figures rather than players to admire beyond their sporting and competitive abilities. Boris Becker was the most charismatic player of his generation but never sought to be a leader, only a personality. And of the 1990s generation, Pete Sampras was the most successful but was never comfortable in the limelight, while Andre Agassi was too much of a troubled soul to make the most of his immense natural intelligence; of that generation, Jim Courier was the most eloquent, yet his eloquence only really developed after his playing career stopped and he wasn’t at the top for long enough to make a serious mark. The only other figures from the open era of tennis who might rival Federer and Djokovic are two women: Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. They were both pioneers but have probably been appreciated more since their playing days than during them. What Federer and Djokovic have achieved is the mixture of greatness and admiration during their careers (Federer more than Djokovic), to the point where they both merit the term ‘statesman’ in a way few others do.