Before becoming the only coach for Novak Djokovic, Goran Ivanisevic spent 4 years with Marian Vajda to help the World No.1 sustain his success. After all of these years, winning 12 Grand Slams together, Ivanisevic and Djokovic mutually ended their arrangement. Weeks after the split, the Croatian detailed his experience with the Serbian legend.
As expected, anything other than a title win is considered a failure for Novak Djokovic. Apart from the unreal expectations, Djokovic being ‘demanding’ drove Goran to end his stint as the former’s coach.
“Well, when you train Novak Djokovic, anything other than winning the title at any tournament is a failure. That’s a lot of pressure to deal with.
“Novak is very demanding. Something new has to happen every day, he always wants to get better. If you can’t handle it, it’s better not to take the job at all,” Ivanisevic said in an interview with Blick (via Sportskeeda).
Additionally, Goran also couldn’t cope with Djokovic’s small attention span.
“The language certainly helped me – we had no barrier between us. With Novak it’s like this: you only have a few seconds to explain something to him.
“He then wants to know 15 things from you at once, but you only have three seconds to do it. So you have to try to summarize everything in some clever way. It can be hard, but I enjoyed it with Novak,” he added.
Clearly, coaching Novak Djokovic can be exhausting for even some of the best in the business. Hence, the constant changing of coaches over his illustrious career doesn’t come as a surprise. Before Goran Ivanisevic, Andre Agassi had coached Novak Djokovic for almost 18 months.
Novak Djokovic not sticking with one coach for a long period has often hurt his legacy as the likes of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer didn’t have to face this issue as such comparatively.
Unlike Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal Stuck With Toni Nadal
Toni Nadal began coaching Rafael Nadal when the latter was in his teenage years. Till 2017, Toni coached Rafa and the duo witnessed a lot success together. However, Toni gave up coaching his nephew due to the exhausting tennis schedule. As communicated, there was no bad blood between the two.
Even when Toni was the coach, he didn’t allow Rafa to treat him in the same manner that Novak Djokovic treated his coaches. Since Toni didn’t accept any kind of fees from his relative, he was allowed to behave candidly without having to worry about being fired. This strategy did end up working as the Raging Bull always obeyed his coach.
