Novak Djokovic is a Serbian professional tennis player. He is currently ranked the world No. 1 player in men’s singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), and has held the top position for a record total 382 weeks, finishing as the year-end No. 1 an Open Era record seven times.
Early Life
Novak Djokovic was born on 22 May 1987 in Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia, to Dijana (née Žagar) and Srdjan Djokovic. He is of paternal Serbian and maternal Croatian descent.His two younger brothers, Marko and Djordje, have also played professional tennis.
Djokovic began playing tennis at the age of four, after his parents gave him a mini-racket and a soft foam ball, which his father claimed became “the most beloved toy in his life”. His parents then sent him to a tennis camp in Novi Sad. In the summer of 1993, as a six-year-old, he was sent to a tennis camp organized by the Teniski Klub Partizan and overseen by Yugoslav tennis player Jelena Genčić at Mount Kopaonik, where Djokovic’s parents ran a fast-food parlour and a sports equipment business. Upon seeing the child Djokovic playing tennis, she stated: “This is the greatest talent I have seen since Monica Seles.”
Genčić worked with young Djokovic over the following six years before realizing that, owing to his rapid development, going abroad in search of an increased level of competition was the best option for his future. To that end, she contacted Nikola Pilić and in September 1999 the 12-year-old moved to the Pilić tennis academy in Oberschleißheim, Germany, spending four years there. At the age of 14, he began his international career, winning European championships in singles, doubles, and team competition.
Career
Djokovic began his professional career in 2003. At age 20, he disrupted Roger Federer’s and Rafael Nadal’s streak of 11 consecutive Grand Slam tournament victories by winning the 2008 Australian Open. At age 24, Djokovic ascended to No. 1 for the first time, winning three majors and five Masters titles in 2011. In 2015, Djokovic reached 15 consecutive finals and won a season-record 10 Big Titles. His dominant run extended through to the 2016 French Open, where he completed a non-calendar year Grand Slam and his first career Grand Slam, becoming the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four major titles simultaneously and setting a ranking points record (16,950). Following an injury-caused decline in form in 2017, Djokovic returned to dominance at the 2018 Wimbledon Championships, sweeping three straight majors and returning to world No. 1. In 2021, Djokovic won the first three majors of the year and attempted to complete a Grand Slam at the US Open, but lost in the final to Daniil Medvedev. As of the 2023 Australian Open, Djokovic has won 10 of the last 18 majors.
Representing Serbia, Djokovic led the Serbian national team to their first Davis Cup title in 2010 and to the inaugural ATP Cup title in 2020. Moreover, he won the bronze medal for Serbia at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Djokovic has won the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award four times (2012, 2015, 2016, 2019), the BBC Sports Personality World Sport Star of the Year award in 2011 and the L’Équipe Champion of Champions award in 2021. He is also a recipient of the Order of St. Sava, the Order of Karađorđe’s Star, and the Order of the Republika Srpska.
Beyond competition, Djokovic is an active philanthropist and a former ATP player council president.In August 2020, Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil announced the formation of the Professional Tennis Players Association as the first player-only association in tennis, citing the need for players to have more influence on the tour and advocating better prize money structure for lower-ranked players.
Some observers, tennis players and coaches describe Djokovic as the greatest of all time, primarily because he won tournaments by beating the top players in the world and having better head-to-head records against his biggest rivals in one of the strongest eras of tennis, collecting the most weeks at No. 1, winning the most Big Titles, beating the top 10 and top 5 players the most, finishing the most years at No. 1 while winning all Grand Slam and Masters events at least twice, which has never been done by another player even once.
Djokovic is credited with beating more higher-ranked players on the way to his Grand Slam tournament trophies than anyone among the big three. Former world’s number 1 Daniil Medvedev labelled Novak Djokovic the “greatest tennis player in history” after winning his first major title at the 2021 US Open against Djokovic. Pat Cash emphasized that Djokovic is one of two players who beat Rafael Nadal at the French Open, which he considers to be “the biggest challenge in tennis”. Richard Krajicek and The Roar, sports opinion website, said that Djokovic should be considered for the greatest player of all time because he is the only one among his greatest rivals who has won four Grand Slams in a row. Patrick Mouratoglou stated, “Novak is the most complete player of all times. That enables him to find the solution to most of the problems on court and this, on every surface. It explains why he is now in the best position to become the GOAT”.
Tennis pundits have classified many of Djokovic’s matches as some of the greatest contests ever, in particular the 2012 Australian Open final in which he beat Rafael Nadal. Some analysts claim that the Djokovic–Nadal rivalry ranks as the best rivalry in tennis history because of the quality of matches they produce.
He has won a total of 93 singles titles on the men’s ATP Tour with titles comprising a joint-record 22 majors, a record ten Australian Opens, a record 38 Masters, a joint-record six Tour Finals, and a record 66 Big Titles. Djokovic has completed a non-calendar year Grand Slam in singles, becoming the only man in tennis history to be the reigning champion of the four majors at once across three different surfaces. He is also the first man in the Open Era to achieve a double Career Grand Slam in singles and the only player to complete the career Golden Masters in singles by winning all of the nine Masters tournaments, which he has done twice.
Personal Life
Djokovic is a self-described fan of languages, speaking Serbian, English, French, German, and Italian.
He met his future wife, Jelena Ristić, in high school, and began dating her in 2005. The two became engaged in September 2013, got married on 10 July 2014 at Sveti Stefan in Montenegro, while a church wedding was held in the same place, on 12 July 2014, in the Church of Saint Stephen which belongs to Praskvica Monastery. In April 2014, Djokovic announced that he and Ristić were expecting their first child. Their son was born in October 2014.Their daughter was born in 2017.
Net Worth
Novak Djokovic is a Serbian professional tennis player who has a net worth of $220 million dollars.
