The legendary player-coach pair of Novak Djokovic and Goran Ivanisevic continues to go strong, as they entered the 5th year of their professional partnership in 2024. The duo have together appeared for 8 Grand Slams, and as things remain, they will be together for several more in the future. Although they didn’t officially collaborate until June 2019, it was years ago when a young Djokovic made his first impression on the former Croatian Wimbledon winner.
The year was 2001 and Goran Ivanisevic had just won his miraculous Grand Slam i.e. 2001 Wimbledon. To date, he remains the only player to win a Grand Slam as a wildcard entrant. Right around that time, a 14-year-old Serbian boy, with the dream of becoming the greatest tennis player ever, visited the academy of another Croatian tennis player, Nikola Pilic. Pilic recalled that he urged Ivanisevic, his friend, to play with the young boy for 5 minutes. He was so good that they ended up playing for 25 minutes straight. Little did the world know that that young 14-year-old boy aka Novak Djokovic will one day go and win 24 Grand Slams (& counting) in his career.
But Ivanisevic knew. He may not have anticipated Djokovic’s number of Grand Slam wins at the time, but he knew that the Serb was a special player in the making. Goran Ivanisevic was a star for Novak Djokovic, and to impress him at such a young age, must’ve stayed embedded in his memory. In 2019, when Djokovic finally decided to change his head coach from Marian Vajda to Goran Ivanisevic, the reason was Vajda wanted to continue coaching more players at Wimbledon. Djokovic didn’t want that.
Novak Djokovic and Goran Ivanisevic similarities that fans usually don’t know about
World No.1 player Novak Djokovic and his coach Goran Ivanisevic have something in common. In 2018, when Djokovic won his fourth Wimbledon title, his ATP ranking was 21. This made him the lowest-ranked Wimbledon titlist since Goran Ivanisevic in 2001, who won as a wildcard entrant.
Not only that, Novak Djokovic and Goran Ivanisevic almost feel like a perfect tennis match, since both of them have a penchant for smashing their rackets. While Ivanisevic once lost a match after running out of rackets, since he kept smashing them, Djokovic has smashed his racket a whopping 62 times in his career. That is 62 times more than Rafael Nadal, who never once smashed his racket during or after a match. A young Roger Federer, on the other hand, smashed it 5 times during his early days of fierce aggression.
As the pair continue their merry bond into the future, will they win more Grand Slams in the near future? Nicola Pilic thinks so. And so does former Chilean player and current coach Nicolas Massu.
