Daily Mail

Is troubled Djokovic the Tiger Woods of tennis?

- by Alison Boshoff

SHOWY, intense and often unpopular, Serbian Novak Djokovic is a target for gossips on the internatio­nal tennis circuit. Rumours about raging Djokovic, who once screamed at a crowd ‘Now you will all suck my d***!’ having an ‘eventful’ marriage have been a conversati­onal staple for some time. Indeed, as we shall see, the scandal-sheets in Serbia, if you can believe them, claim that he has been endangerin­g his marriage with a string of liaisons.

Certainly, there have been rumours that his marriage has been in trouble for at least 18 months, with wife Jelena’s stony face at the US Open last summer said to tell its own glum story. Footage released of the two of them bickering over a Facebook video in February only tends to reinforce the impression that there is trou

ble in paradise. (He chided her for the angle at which she shot the footage of him training, and she bitterly asked where his manners were, adding: ‘“Thank you love, thank you”. Isn’t that the way to say it?’)

And now BBC commentato­r John McEnroe has brought the talk of personal issues to public attention, rightly or wrongly comparing the 30year- old champion with troubled golfer Tiger Woods.

Speaking about Djokovic’s period of poor form, McEnroe said Djokovic ‘had some off-court issues with the family,’ adding: ‘That’s going to throw you. If you’re distracted, you’re not the same player.’

He went on: ‘The person that comes to mind immediatel­y with Novak is not a tennis player, it’s actually a golfer: Tiger Woods.

‘When [Woods] had the issues with his wife and then he seemed to go completely off the rails and has never been even close to being the same player.

‘So we’re starting to say: “Wait a minute, is this possible with him?” I think there’s a big difference, one is the age, but two the health. I think this isn’t a physical thing, this is more a mental thing.’

Of course Woods’ procliviti­es were such that he went to rehab for sex addiction in 2009 after his infidelity to wife Elin emerged – more than a dozen women claimed to have been intimate with him and it was said that he had up to 120 mistresses at one time or other.

THE rumours about Djokovic bear no comparison, but in the tennis world, pursuit of free and easy sexual conquests is very much a part of the culture at a certain level – think of champion Boris Becker and his tryst in a broom cupboard, and Jimmy Connors and his legendary appetites in his heyday in the 1970s.

And it is true that there has been gossip about Djokovic and his marriage for quite some time.

The Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport even claimed last summer that a divorce was on the cards.

But surely comparison­s with notorious womaniser Woods are far-fetched?

While Djokovic is far from any mea culpa, he has confirmed that his poor form at Wimbledon last year was the result of off-court dramas.

Last year he was surprising­ly knocked out in the third round by Sam Querrey, and then pulled out of Serbia’s Davis Cup tie against Great Britain, explaining that he needed to spend time with his family.

Djokovic said later: ‘I am in a position, like everybody else, like all of you, we all have private issues and things that are more challenges than issues.

‘ More things that we have to encounter and overcome in order to evolve as a human being. That [Wimbledon] was the period for me. It happened right there. It was resolved and life is going on like everything else.

‘It was some other thing I was going through privately and nothing linked to the wrist injury.’

For the record, though, Djokovic has been with model-pretty business studies graduate Jelena, 31, for more than a decade.

They were married in Montenegro in 2014 when she was six months’ pregnant with son Stefan.

It’s not easy being a tennis wife, but she is known for being an impeccably polite part of his entourage and running his charitable foundation. She is also pregnant with their second child, who is due in September. The couple live in Monte Carlo and she travels the world to watch him play.

She will not, however, be unaware of the gossipy stories which link her husband to a range of women.

In 2011, it was said that he was texting gorgeous blonde Serbian pop star Natasa Bekvalac.

Stories linking him to Miss Bekvalac continued for a further five years, with the magazines going wild when both of them were in Ibiza on separate holidays over the same summer.

She has furiously said there is no affair, and claimed that the entire brouhaha is made-up.

Meanwhile, the gossip magazines claim that he is also involved with a blonde lawyer from the Ukraine, named only as Victoria, whose Instagram feed shows that she follows him wherever in the world he plays.

He is also said to have an ‘emotional bond’ with DJ Lady Lee, real name Lidija Popovic, whom he dated pre- Jelena.

Now busty Miss Popovic is every wife’s worst nightmare: a publicityl­oving ex who seems to spend half her life posing in a swimsuit and the other half gossiping about Djokovic’s marriage with Serbian reporters.

Serbia’s highest paid female DJ, she says that they have a continuing platonic bond.

One of her most recent interventi­ons has been to suggest that her ex would be far happier dating Bollywood film star Deepika Padukone.

Why would she say this? Well, Djokovic was seen out in March 2016 with actress Miss Padukone, known as Dippy.

The pair were observed leaving The Nice Guy bar in Los Angeles together in a black chauffeur-driven car.

She wore a monochrome minidress, while he wore double denim and a smile.

He later explained that Dippy was a friend of his wife, although Jelena was not there.

What an exhausting distractio­n this must prove for the player, who is famous for being intense, and at times odd.

Who can forget him eating grass after he won Wimbledon (he wanted to see how it tasted, he said)?

Or how he cheered as his coach humped the hood of a Lexus draped in the Serbian flag while celebratin­g his victory at the Madrid Open?

Djokovic’s supporters say that while he may appear obnoxious, he simply has a goofy sense of humour which occasional­ly comes across the wrong way.

At times, such as when dancing to pop music in an Afro wig, he is called adorable. At others, such as when he hit out at the crowd at Flushing Meadow for believing that he had faked his injuries, he is rewarded with boos.

Born in May 1987 in Belgrade, then part of Yugoslavia, he is the eldest of three sons born to Srdjan and Dijana

who owned a pizza restaurant and snack bar in the mountain resort town of Kopaonik. He would help wash the dishes, stuff crepes and wait tables.

His entry to tennis came by chance after pro Jelena Gencic spotted him hanging around some local courts and invited him to join her clinic. Within a week she said the five-year-old was ‘ the biggest talent i have seen since Monica [seles]’ and a ‘golden child’.

His formative experience, however, was the 1999 Nato bombing of Belgrade, which lasted for 78 nights. He was resident in Belgrade at the time, and just 11 years old.

in his autobiogra­phy serve to Win, he said he chose to go to the site of the previous night’s attacks ‘figuring that if they bombed one place yesterday, they probably wouldn’t bomb it today’.

The family was crippled financiall­y by the sanctions that followed, and his father said they were evicted from their rented homes many times. Eventually srdjan borrowed money from a loan shark and sent his son to a tennis academy in Munich. Djokovic broke into the top 100 aged 18. His early years were marked by drop- outs and injuries, which led even the usually mild Roger Federer to call him ‘a joke’ in 2008. Just before winning a semi-final in the Us Open that year he claimed to be carrying 16 injuries. However, in 2010 he became convinced that eating gluten was his problem, and cut it out of his diet. His fitness improved. in the 2011 season he had one of the greatest in tennis history, winning 43 consecutiv­e matches, bagging ten titles on three different surfaces. He defeated both Rafael Nadal and Federer ten times. Decade together: Novak Djokovic with his wife Jelena

in all he has won 12 grand slam make sure you are in the moment. titles (Federer has won 18 and That is much easier to say than to Nadal 15). do. You have to exclude all dis

Legendary tennis coach Nick tractions and focus only on what Bollettier­i calls him ‘perhaps the you are about to do. best put-together player that i’ve ‘in order to get to that state of seen in over sixty years’. Former concentrat­ion, you need to have a champ Andre Agassi lauds his lot of experience, and a lot of menability to snatch a point when he

tal strength. You are not born with is on the defensive. Nobody, it seems, can return the screaming that. it is something you have to serves of the modern game quite build by yourself. like he can. ‘i believe that half of any victory

But all of this technical ability is in a tennis match is in place before nothing without mastery of the you step on to the court. if you inner game. As Djokovic explained don’t have that self-belief, then in an interview with the Financial fear takes over. And then it will Times in 2015: ‘The first thing is to get too much for you to handle.’

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 ??  ?? Top left: Djokovic’s ex Lidija Popovic Right: Actress Deepika Padukone, who he shared a cab with, circled
Top left: Djokovic’s ex Lidija Popovic Right: Actress Deepika Padukone, who he shared a cab with, circled

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