Novak Djokovic left in tears as ex-coach recalls emotional conversation

Novak Djokovic will go down in history as one of tennis’ greats, although the era he has played has seen him up against plenty of stiff competition. But with career earnings of more than $100million, there are few players who can claim to rival his level of success. Born in Belgrade in what was then Yugoslavia,

Djokovic’s father is of Montenegrin extraction while his mother is Croatian – but Djokovic himself considers himself Serbian. He began playing tennis at the age of four and showed an almost immediate aptitude for the sport, working with Jelena Gencic until, at the age of 12, she arranged for him to move to the Nikola Pilic tennis academy in Germany. Nine years later,

it paid off when Djokovic won his first Grand Slam, the 2008 Australian Open. It would take him another three years – Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal getting in the way again – before he would add a second, again the Australian, but doing so opened the floodgates. By the end of 2014, when he finished the year as world No 1 for the third time, he already had seven major titles. But in many ways, his greatest achievement was yet to come. From January 2015 to June 2016,

he won five out of six Grand Slams; only Stan Wawrinka’s French Open triumph interrupted the streak. However, it predicated a year-long battle with an elbow injury that, in the same year of the resurgence of his two great rivals Nadal and Federer, saw him pull out of Wimbledon and cut his season short six months early. Djokovic has since recovered though and showed he’s back to his best by winning Wimbledon in 2018 and the Australian Open in 2020.