Save your energy for court, Henman tells ailing Djokovic
World No 1 says criticism he faces can sometimes get to him Serbian meets Germany’s Alexander Zverev in last eight
As Novak Djokovic prepares for his Australian Open quarter-final against Alexander Zverev this morning, Tim Henman has advised him to keep all his energy for the court – rather than worrying what others might think of him.
On Sunday, Djokovic was asked by Serbian reporters about his decision to fight through his abdominal injury. Or, to be more precise, whether he had noticed a difference between the lukewarm reaction towards his two battling wins and the hero’s reception for Roger Federer when he beat Tennys Sandgren with a groin strain last year.
“That’s like opening Pandora’s box,” Djokovic said. “If we begin to discuss that, we won’t finish this evening. Presumably there are millions of different reasons.”
Djokovic has had a bumpy past year on the PR front. It started with ill-timed comments on vaccination early in the pandemic and continued through the Covid19 outbreak at his Adria Tour exhibition last summer, before reaching a new low last month when he called for the 72 players in Melbourne’s hard quarantine to get “private houses with a court”.
Then, when he fought through his injury to beat Taylor Fritz on Friday, Djokovic’s eye-bulging celebrations were undercut by a tone of scepticism from many, including Fritz, who said: “If he was really, really injured he wouldn’t have kept playing.” Expanding on this theme on Sunday, Djokovic said: “I cannot say it doesn’t sometimes get to me – of course an injustice or an unfair portrayal by the media affects me. I have emotions and naturally I don’t enjoy it. I have the power only to control that which I am doing, not that which others are writing about me, how they judge or criticise me.
“Perhaps I antagonise people and then those things happen. But, yes, my mistakes are perhaps less forgiven in the public in comparison to other players.”
It was interesting to hear Henman address the issue, as he never had a warm relationship with the media in his playing days. He is now a pundit for Eurosport’s Australian Open coverage, a member of the Lawn Tennis Association’s advisory panel and a likely future chairman of the All England Club.
“I played on a much lower level,” Henman said, “but as a British player at Wimbledon I always felt it was important to control the things I could control – and that was purely my preparation and my performance. Everything else I didn’t worry about.
“When I look at Novak, he is the No1 in the world with 17 slams, and this is what 100 per cent of his mental focus should be on. So perceptions and other people’s thoughts – I am surprised he even gives one per cent of his energy or his time or his focus to these things.”
The state of Djokovic’s injury will be critical today. It clearly affected his forehand during his fourthround win over Milos Raonic, especially when he was aiming up the line, but his overall game is so bulletproof he still came through.