Bianca Mundo provides Ubitennis with a translation of a captivating and extensive article on Novak Djokovic’s rise in tennis. The original story was published by L’Equipe on 12 June 2023.
The man who has rattled codes and crowned heads has not faltered on this steep course, which began on the small road leading from the Kopaonik pizzeria to the tennis courts. Yet there were so many obstacles and twists and turns before he took the top spot this morning with 23 Grand Slam titles. Alone. One of a kind.
Imagine a synopsis featuring a young boy lost in a small Balkan ski resort, accidentally introduced to tennis by a teacher who makes him listen to classical music before continuing his training under the deafening noise of bombs. Penniless, the boy decides to set out to conquer a Western world dominated by two ultra-popular and indestructible superheroes, and to achieve his goals after a series of heart-stopping matches, metaphysical questioning and political activism.
This story would be so crazy, so full of twists and turns and questions that it could be considered a Marvel story. Iron Man, for example. But in truth, the hero in question is called Novak Djokovic, a Serbian icon, the one who has to deal with often hostile crowds and who during Wimbledon 2021 still had to answer the question: “How do you feel about being the villain?” as if he was still, and forever, the one who prevents everything from going according to plan, a victim of the third wheel man’s curse.
But without him, without his metamorphoses and eccentricities, we might have ended up being bored in the binary world of the flawless Roger Federer and the physically preposterous Rafael Nadal, both unchallenged champions of political correctness. Djokovic represented this strange creature, sensitive and implacable, at the same time gladiator and sometimes delirious, unbridled and granite-principled, exuberant and ascetic, the one of sympathetic antics and imitations, sometimes an avowed leader, sometimes less inspired, ending up as the oil king. A true enigma.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 2: Djokovic’s first coach
