Despite the title, this isn’t really a post about Srdjan Djoković. Like various others during the second week of the Australian Open, I’m using the father of the top men’s player in the world to get your attention. Unlike many of them, I’m doing so for what I hope is an edifying purpose. Namely, I want to unpack a widely-reported incident that took place outside Rod Laver Arena last month in order to make distinctions between different types of information. In the second part of the post, I’ll offer an interpretation of the varieties of fan sentiment, ethnic pride, nationalist iconography, &/or political ideology that were expressed on the tournament grounds after the quarterfinal match between Novak Djoković and Andrey Rublev.
Part 1
First, the facts: Following complaints by spectators during a first-round match between Kateryna Baindl (UKR) and Kamilla Rakhimova (RUS), as well as a demand from the Ukrainian ambassador to Australia, Tennis Australia belatedly introduced a ban on Russian and Belarusian flags. Over the course of the subsequent 12 days, they added more flags, banners, and symbols to the prohibited list in order to cast a wider net for potentially-provocative displays by attendees.
Though there may have been others who managed to sneak in flags here and there (and we know that security ejected unruly spectators for a variety of reasons throughout the fortnight), it wasn’t until the middle of the second week that there was a news-making incident involving about six men waving Russian (and related) flags and chanting pro-Putin slogans on the steps leading from the two main show-courts into Garden Square.
Map of Melbourne Park, with Garden Square at center, courtesy Tennis Australia
The timeline: Djoković’s on-court interview ended around 10:00pm; shortly thereafter, Novak fans began to assemble on the steps, as they had after each of his wins. Though at least one of the aforementioned men is visible in the background of my videos and photos of the festivities, it wasn’t until the significantly larger group began to disperse, at approximately 10:30, that these men briefly took center stage.
Just took a walk around Melbourne Park after filing and a group of people were standing on the Rod Laver Arena steps, holding up a flag with Vladimir Putin’s face and chanting in support of Russia. pic.twitter.com/2p0LfkyVC3
A few minutes prior to that, some of the men in question had stopped Srdjan Djoković for a picture as he was leaving the fan gathering. As can be seen in the photo below, the main culprit is not only holding a flag emblazoned with Vladimir Putin’s face but also wearing a t-shirt with a “Z” symbol over the Night Wolves logo. (I’ll discuss the significance of these accoutrements in Part 2.)
Srdjan Djoković poses with fans & other attendees as AO security looks on (photo credit: Miodrag Dimitrijević of Nova)
Within minutes, event security confronted the men and escorted them from the site, where they were questioned by Victoria Police.
For the record: while I spent some time observing the celebration, and walked past Srdjan and his entourage on my way from the media center to the steps, I left the area 5-10 minutes before things got ugly. So, unfortunately, I’m not in a position to say whether people were dispersing organically or began leaving due to these men’s disruptive behavior. (I do know, however, that some fans wishing to say hello to Novak’s father turned away when they saw these men approaching him.)
In the background: An ethnic Russian activist named Semyon Boikov, who also goes by the name “Aussie Cossack,” had encouraged his social-media followers to “retaliate” against Tennis Australia for what he called their “discrimination,” “racism,” and “attack on honor and dignity” in banning various Russian flags. The very day TA announced the ban, Boikov offered a cash reward to anyone who succeeded in displaying a pro-Russian symbol during a televised match and provided a helpful list of all matches featuring Russian players. Subsequently, he congratulated attendees who had managed to evade the ban, before specifically suggesting the Djoković-Rublev quarterfinal as a high-profile opportunity to do so. In all, Boikov—who has some 161,000 YouTube subscribers, solicits volunteers, and raises money off his content—published twenty-two posts and videos about Russian flags at the Australian Open on his channel over a two-week period.
Assessment: Clearly, the Tennis Australia flag policy and the security measures in place to implement it weren’t enough to stop people determined to bring banned items into Melbourne Park. In fairness, though, it’s pretty tough to thoroughly search the bags—and bodies—of each of the tens of thousands of people coming through the gates every day; and AO security had the additional challenge of distinguishing between similar-looking Russian (🇷🇺) and Serbian (🇷🇸) flags. In a few cases, members of the security team were over-zealous with flag-draped fans there to support Djoković; in a handful of other cases, they missed people who, I think it’s safe to say, had ulterior motives for coming to the tournament on the day(s) they did. All things considered, my main criticism of the AO is that their security staff didn’t act sooner to remove these men. But, even so, my criticism is qualified, as there may have been other factors contributing to their decision, such as waiting for police back-up or prioritizing the safety of the larger crowd by delaying action in order to minimize chances of people getting hurt should any violence erupt as they attempted to detain the men.
Afterwards: In the interest of transparency, I’ll confess that I jumped to conclusions when I first saw the headlines about Srdjan Djoković. Anyone who has followed Novak’s career knows that the father has often been a public-relations liability to the son; and I’ve followed it more closely than most—not least, because I speak Serbian. So, I reacted to the photo a colleague sent our Serbian media group chat late Wednesday night by rolling my eyes. The next day, I reacted to the flurry of tweets I saw when I first checked Twitter like a lot of other people did: by making a judgment without clicking the accompanying links and reading the articles, never mind watching the video “evidence” and evaluating its source. And I did this despite having more contextual information at my disposal than most people, not less. So, this whole episode was a salutary reminder for me, too: slow down; take a breath; read the article; check the source; try to keep your confirmation bias at bay; and consider what else you know or where you can look for more information. Also: since no one needs to tweet (ever), there’s no professional obligation or journalistic value in tweeting about an event before you have the facts straight.
In terms of the way this incident was covered in the first 24-36 hours, I’d suggest readers look at when stories were published or broadcast, which outlets published or broadcast them first (and which waited on details), whether they were published online only or also in print (the editorial standards for the latter are generally higher), what sorts of reporting they were based on, and how they were framed. Five things, in particular, stand out to me:
Many stories were published too soon after the incident to allow for much reporting (e.g., verification, interviews, & research) or even fact-checking.
The main character of the stories shifted very quickly from a group of disruptive men tossed from Melbourne Park to Novak’s father.
None of the articles that I read or news segments that I watched quoted eyewitness accounts (by the journalists themselves or spectators who had observed the events in question).
The primary source for most stories, other than a Tennis Australia press release, was a video created by the culprits themselves, which included misleading edits, descriptions, and subtitles provided by the “Aussie Cossack” channel.
As a result, stories presented a mix of accurate information (Srdjan did indeed pose for a picture with two of these men), misinformation (the misquotation and inaccurate translation), and speculation (e.g., attempts to interpret the deeper meaning of Djoković senior’s behavior based on an incomplete &/or inadequate grasp of the facts). On top of that, the stories also—albeit inadvertently—spread disinformation by amplifying a propaganda video made to manipulate viewers and advocate specific ideological and policy positions.
To expand on the disinformation point: even if one didn’t witness the scene that night or have enough information at hand to be able to spot the inaccuracies in the video posted by “Aussie Cossack,” one can make some inferences by viewing it in context. Specifically, who filmed the two parts of the incident: 1) the “photo” of Srdjan with two supposed Novak fans that abruptly (and presumably without explanation to Djoković senior) morphed into a video greeting to Alexander Zaldostanov; and 2) the group unfurling Russian flags and cheering Putin on the steps? Though The Guardian’s Tumaini Carayol happened to catch these guys in the latter act, they certainly weren’t leaving it to chance. Why were their short clips then featured in a longer video (set to patriotic Serbian music!) produced for social-media consumption? What can be gleaned about these fellows from a) what they were wearing, holding, and saying; b) the YouTube channel to which they submitted their cell-phone videos; &/or c) a simple Google search for either Boikov himself or the Night Wolves motorcycle “club”?
An aside: the initial media cycle lasted less than a day before it moved on to stories about reactions to the incident—interestingly, more to Srdjan Djoković himself than to the flag-ban-evading, political-statement-making culprits. If you’re interested in journalism, I’d recommend reading a post by NYU professor Jay Rosen about “scoops.” Rosen opens by observing that “Journalists tend to be obsessed with scoops, meaning: the first to break the news, and being seen as the first, which means getting credit for it among peers. But not all scoops,” he continues, “are created equal.” I’ll leave it to others to determine what kind of “scoop” the Srdjan story was—and how well the initial reports held up.
Answering only part of the last question: Boikov is someone with a substantial record of both pro-Russian activism in Australia, where he was born, and propagandistic videos and appearances on Russian television. Additionally, Boikov has stated, “We never felt ourselves to be Australian, we were aliens there. I consider myself to be a Russian.” He is not, to put it mildly, a reliable source. In fact, he has made his “Aussie Cossack” group’s motives quite clear in interviews: “We’ll always support the policies of the [Russian] state, we respect very much our Commander-in-Chief, Putin. And we have a unique capacity to support Russia from within a hostile state. Even the FSB or a battalion of the Russian SAS can’t achieve that, because unlike them we are citizens of this state.” Enough said. Why journalists would take what Boikov says on any subject at face value is beyond me.
To make matters worse: while most of Boikov’s videos have below 50 thousand views, the much-embedded, linked, and shared video about the “bold political statement” Srdjan Djoković supposedly made now has 181 thousand views. By every measure imaginable, this was a propaganda win for “Aussie Cossack” and his allies—not because his content is the work of a sophisticated genius but because so few media outlets could resist the lure of a controversy that could be tied to Djoković.
But will they come for the tennis? This remains a key question facing the organizers of the Serbia Open, which is being contested this week in Belgrade. Given the crowds during last weekend’s qualifying rounds and on Tuesday’s May Day holiday, there was room—despite the absence of local hero Novak Djoković and his Davis Cup teammates—for cautious optimism. But with the Wednesday retirement of Dušan Lajović, the only Serbian player remaining in the main draw, the answer was looking less hopeful.
The 250-series event, now in its fourth year, is a big deal for both Serbia, which has never hosted an ATP tournament before, and the Djoković family, who owns it. As Novak’s uncle Goran, who serves as tournament director, proudly noted on Friday, Serbia is one of only 32 countries to hold such an event, which has the potential to “contribute significantly to the positive image of the country.” That there is much at stake here is also made clear by the fliers distributed throughout the grounds encouraging spectators to observe proper behavior during matches—not only to help “maintain high standards” at the organizational level but also to “show that we are a tennis nation.” This week’s tournament, however, indicates that there is still a ways to go to prove this point.
First, the bad news. While the popularity of tennis has seen a dramatic increase over the past decade, Serbia does not have a well-developed tennis culture. Traditionally, the public gravitates toward team sports like football, basketball, and volleyball—in which Serbia has had considerable success and spectators are free to support their favorites with little restraint. Serbian fans of the “white sport,” as it is symbolically called, fall into three categories, each bigger than the last: life-long followers of tennis (most of whom also play recreationally), relatively recent converts to the sport (including youngsters with aspirations to play professionally), and bandwagon fans, who are less tennis enthusiasts than admirers of a few successful players.
For the latter group, Djoković is not merely the nation’s best athlete—its Michael Jordan, if you will—but also its Brad Pitt and even its Kim Kardashian. That is, they fill the stands to be near the bright light of celebrity as much as, if not more than, to see Nole play. That Djoković has earned his achievements through talent, dedication, and hard work is not lost on the many parents, teachers, and even politicians who hold him up as a role model for the nation’s youth. But his success also registers in more superficial ways: his money, status, and fame make him equally a focus of the tabloids and a mainstay of the sports pages. And some of Djoković’s allure has rubbed off on tennis itself, so that regardless of who’s playing, people will come along to the “Novak” Tennis Center to see and be seen. Alas, such patrons are unlikely to make it into the stands unless a familiar face is on court.
Without well-known Serbian players to draw the crowds, the tournament must rely on either the curiosity of the general public or the passion of a much smaller group: those who really care—or want to learn—about tennis. Unfortunately, given the state of the economy, most people can’t afford the seats; or, if they do splurge, it won’t be for more than one session. Perhaps recognizing this, organizers made entry to the site free—not just during the qualifying rounds, as planned, but all week. While this has meant that hard-core fans and students of the game can watch matches on the two outer courts without tickets, it has left the stadium court mostly empty. Unsurprisingly, the largest crowds all week have not been for the tournament’s top seed, Pablo Andujar, but for its biggest name: David Nalbandian, who is familiar from both competing in Belgrade for Davis Cup and, more importantly, being a former top-ten player.
On to the good news. One thing can certainly be said for Djoković Family Sport: they know how—and where—to throw a party. With courts on the banks of the Danube, adjacent to the Belgrade fortress, and just a short walk from the city’s main square, the tournament is ideally situated. Further, evidence of a previous family business, a pizzeria in the ski resort of Kopaonik, can be seen all over their latest enterprise, from the four different restaurants on site (one, naturally, offering gluten-free items) to the Balkan beauties in tennis outfits offering samples of sponsor products; from the expert wait-staff whisking fruit juices, beer, espresso, and clean ashtrays to packed tables at the centrally-located café to the entertainment of the nightly karaoke contest presented by odd couple Mercedes and MTV.
On a more substantive level, the Serbia Open is also doing well by arguably its most important attendees: players and serious fans. According to Andujar, it is a well-run event: “I think it’s a very good tournament,” he noted after his quarter-final win over Lukas Rosol, “even if it’s new and they are [just] starting.” While Andujar admits that he and other players always want “enormous” crowds at their matches (as at Indian Wells, where the stadium was “full of people, clapping every point”), he also acknowledges that the absence of players like Tipsarević is “good for us, for these kinds of people—players that want to grow and be more famous.”
Others, too, benefit from the presence of such an event: for instance, next-generation Serbian hopefuls, like seventeen-year-old Miki Janković, who played his first ATP event this week. Locals who follow the sport closely are also happy to have international talent on display in Belgrade, even if it’s not from the best-known names on tour. Last but not least thrilled by the tournament are practitioners and students of the game, like Hristijan Kovačević and his coach, who, though they couldn’t afford stadium seats, came every day to pick up tips from training sessions and observe the match-play of the professionals whose ranks the thirteen-year-old hopes to one day join.
Ultimately, what stands out at the Serbia Open is the aspirational quality of the venture. The organizers are committed to making the tournament a future success—and not simply in financial terms. Despite this year’s merely “satisfactory” crowds, the director is already talking about developing it into a 500-series event. Though a cynic might see the place as little more than a glorified gift shop selling brand Novak, there are numerous indicators that the venue serves a greater purpose. Take, for instance, the trophy room, full of glittering prizes won by the current #1: perhaps seeing an Olympic medal or a replica Wimbledon Cup will inspire a Serbian child to pick up a racket. And if that isn’t concrete enough, how about this: the center is set to host several ITF Futures events this summer.
Originally published on The Tennis Space (6 May 2012)
This is an Atlas Obscura entry based, in part, on a May 2019 visit to Western Serbia.
“Do you want to marry God?” she asked, not five minutes into our acquaintance. It seemed less a question than an invitation.
I had picked up a young nun on the side of the road, deducing from her all-black attire that we were headed to the same place: Radovašnica monastery, at the foot of Cer (pronounced “tsair”) mountain in Western Serbia. She was from Bosnia, making her way across the former Yugoslavia from one Serbian Orthodox sanctuary to another, final destination unknown. I was from Washington, DC, driving the rural roads of Mačva in a glossy black Fiat Panda I’d picked up a few days earlier from Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Our conversation had taken an intimate turn remarkably quickly.
“No,” I answered bluntly, hoping to cut the evangelizing short. “I only came to light an anniversary candle”—shorthand, in the regional idiom, for the end of a one-year period of mourning. Though I was telling the truth about the candles, traditional beeswax tapers bought for that purpose in one of the nearby villages, it’s also the case that I was in a hurry and Radovašnica was just the first stop on a day trip back in time.
“For Health”
Local lore has it that the monastery’s land was endowed by King Stefan Dragutin of the Nemanjić dynasty in the late 13th century, making it among the oldest in the “Pocerina” region on the north side of the mountain. Both Serbia and the still-disputed territory of Kosovo are dotted with Orthodox monasteries, many far grander in size or set in more dramatic landscape than this one. But Radovašnica, like the others, helps tell the story of Serbia from medieval to modern times. It’s also a gateway between the fields and orchards of the area’s small family farms and the mountain. “Fertile Mačva has always attracted occupiers,” narrates a tv documentary about the monastery, the main church of which was destroyed repeatedly during several hundred years of Ottoman rule, late 18th-century conflicts between Turks and Habsburgs, 19th-century Serbian uprisings, and in two world wars. Sadly, it’s not the only thing around here that’s been “demolished, burned, and plundered.”
Although Cer—named for Quercus cerris, the species of oak that covers the terrain—certainly offers plenty of hiking and other outdoor activity for tourists and locals alike, it’s best known for an August 1914 battle in which the undermanned Serbian army defeated invading Austro-Hungarian forces, resulting in the first Allied victory of World War I. It is to the memory of the fallen from that campaign that the newest Orthodox church in the vicinity, Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, is dedicated. Baptized six years ago on the battle’s centenary, the church also serves as a sort of rest stop for travelers who brave the cobblestone track that traverses the mountaintop. (Google maps will instruct you to get from one end of the mountain to the other by roads at its base for a reason, as I learned when my rental car got stuck in mud created by the combination of spring rains and dirt roads.) When I was last there, both the church and the nearby “Linden Waters” lodge were deserted, though someone had been by recently enough to leave a full bottle of Montenegrin wine on a picnic table out front. A mural behind the church proclaims “Cer’s heroes, holy warriors,” putting a spiritual gloss on what was a decidedly secular event and hinting at the contemporary church’s role in keeping Serbian nationalism alive.
About five miles to the south of the mountain’s peak is a modest museum and monument: an ossuary in the form of natural rock, embellished with the phrase, “Your deeds are immortal.” The Battle of Cer also lives on in a WWI-era song, “March on the Drina,” played at national-team sporting events, and a 1964 film by the same name. Despite this cultural legacy, it’s the case that Cer doesn’t call attention to itself. Unless you know what you’re looking for, you might think the mountain and its surroundings are what an urbanite from Belgrade, a two hours’ drive away, would call a “vukojebina” (literally, “a place where wolves fuck”). The Serbian government, however, is determined not to let the mountain or the military conquest that took place there be forgotten. In late 2018, they announced a plan to construct a memorial complex with a massive glass tower “symbolizing victory,” featuring 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside, and designed to “be visible from large parts of Serbia.” My advice: get there while the wolves still outnumber the tourists.
While you’re there: try honey made by the bee-keeping nuns of nearby Petkovica monastery, ajvar (the roasted red pepper spread made each fall), gibanica (a pie made with alternating layers of filo dough and cheese filling), and the ubiquitous šljivovica (plum brandy, the national drink).
“Would you like to try some?” he asked, offering up a brown paper package he’d just retrieved from a stuffed gym bag. I must have looked dubious, as he added, “It’s good, actually.” But I was hesitant not because I feared how his gluten-free snack would taste but because I was unsure of the propriety of a writer’s sharing food with her subject.
In that moment, though, I wasn’t operating as a journalist. And Novak Djoković was less a world-famous athlete than one of a small group of Serbs hanging around after a press conference, commiserating over a painful loss. Despite our differences in status, it felt like we were in this together.
I cupped my hands and watched as he poured a mix of oats and carob chunks into them. He was right: it wasn’t bad. We both munched as we resumed our conversation—by that point, we’d shifted from tennis and sports journalism to the most apt Serbian translation for “drama queen” to recent films about Nikola Tesla.
We’d started talking some 15 minutes earlier, after Djoković stretched out on the dais near one of his Davis Cup teammates, with whom I was chatting. In front of the podium, the other Serbian players were taking turns doing their final domestic tv interviews of the week. In an unusual move, Djoković was waiting for everyone to finish up so they could leave the media center as a team. Even the players too young to have been there from the beginning knew what this day had become: it was the end of an era.
Photo taken from a distance by Argentine photographer JP
Whether the era in question began in 2001, when Jelena Janković and Janko Tipsarević foreshadowed the success to come by winning the juniors singles titles at the Australian Open, or in 2004, when Nenad Zimonjić lifted the mixed doubles trophy in Melbourne, beating defending champions Martina Navratilova and Leander Paes with his Russian partner, or even in 2007, when Ana Ivanović and Novak Djoković made their first major finals (at the French Open and US Open, respectively) and ended the year ranked among the top 4 players in the world—it hardly matters. In fact, one could argue that the era started in 1995, when rump Yugoslavia returned to international tennis competition, in both the men’s Davis Cup and women’s Federation Cup, after several years in the wilderness due to UN sanctions. Zimonjić, the only Serb whose career had spanned this entire quarter century, was now 43 and playing on artificial hips.
In November 2019, the Serbian men approached the Spanish capital for the national team tournament with two goals: to finish the decade as they’d started it, by winning the Davis Cup, and to give their outspoken, bespectacled teammate Janko Tipsarević a proper sendoff into retirement. (A group vacation in the Maldives was to follow.) Tipsarević had already competed at his final ATP event a month prior, making the quarterfinals at the Stockholm Open. He was selected for the national team despite having played only intermittently—not just during his last season but over the previous five years—due to a series of injuries which had derailed his career after two seasons ranked in the top ten. In Madrid, he and Viktor Troicki, who had performed the hero’s role in their 2010 Davis Cup victory, played two doubles matches in the round-robin group stage, winning one and losing the other to one of the very best doubles teams in the world: Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut of France, who had gone undefeated at the ATP’s year-end championship the previous week. In the quarterfinal tie against Russia, with the teams poised at one match apiece, the Serbs had opted to substitute Djoković in to partner Troicki in the deciding doubles contest. The childhood friends, who had won their first titles together as juniors, suffered a devastating loss in a third-set tiebreaker, having failed to capitalize on several match points.
The six-member team entered the interview room in silence and sat behind their microphones and tented name-cards with bowed heads, at least a few sporting red eyes and Djoković hiding his face under the bill of a baseball cap. The players’ answers were emotional from the start, with Djoković admitting the loss “hurts us really badly” and Troicki adding, “I probably feel the worst ever [after a loss]. I never experienced such a moment in my career, in my life. And I let my team down, and I apologize to them.” It likely wasn’t until Zimonjić, in the captain’s chair, choked up that the majority of the assembled press understood what was at stake for the Serbs in this Davis Cup campaign.
“Sorry,” he began haltingly. “It’s not [about] winning or losing, just for you to understand.” Through tears, he explained: “It’s that the four players sitting here. . . I would say they are the golden generation of our tennis. And I see it as an end because it’s Janko’s last match. . . . You dream, maybe, to go all the way—to celebrate, you know, with a victory. But sometimes it doesn’t happen, what you wanted to happen.”
Grab the tissues, this is an emotional one to watch 😢
Hear from @nenadzim after Serbia's loss, describing his team as "The Golden Generation"
— Davis Cup by Rakuten Madrid Finals (@DavisCupFinals) November 22, 2019
Even though, two years later, Djoković remains on the top of the game, Zimonjić was right: the loss in Madrid marked the end of something significant. Ana Ivanović, the youngest of the “golden” group, had preceded all of them into retirement, opting to stop playing at age 29, after injury cut short her 2016 season. Though Jelena Janković hasn’t officially hung up her racquets, she also hasn’t competed professionally since undergoing back surgery after the 2017 US Open. Viktor Troicki, who rebounded from that worst-ever feeling by helping Serbia win the inaugural ATP Cup trophy at the start of 2020, spent the last year transitioning from active player to Davis Cup captain.
II. Serbia: July, 2010
Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was a summer that would change my life.
I spent a chunk of it, including my birthday, in the village of my father’s birth, 100km west of Belgrade. There was nothing unusual about this, as I’d been visiting my grandmother’s farm since infancy; nor was it a rare occurrence for me to celebrate at least part of my birthday inside, watching tv. When my grandmother first got a black and white television in the early ‘80s, my siblings and I would rush from the back yard where we spent most of our day into the living room to catch the cartoons that came on before the nightly news—most often, Looney Tunes reels dubbed into what was then called “Serbo-Croatian.” But as I got older, I watched more sports coverage, especially of my favorite event, Wimbledon, which (like my birthday) takes place in early July.
In 2010, I got a double-dose of tennis. Though Novak Djoković had lost in the semifinals at the All England Club, the Davis Cup quarterfinals were scheduled for the weekend following Wimbledon’s conclusion—and Serbia was playing in them for the first time as an independent nation. This was a huge occasion, in part because it had taken the Serbian team 15 years to climb from the lowest tier of regional zone competition to the “World Group”: the 16 best tennis nations. For the previous three seasons, they’d been knocking at the door of the tennis elite but unable to gain full entry, repeatedly losing in the first round and having to win September playoffs to get another chance the next year. Perhaps a bigger deal in the Balkans: Serbia was facing neighbors, former compatriots, and relatively recent co-belligerents in Croatia for a spot in the semifinals. As this was the first international meeting between the two men’s teams, members of which had all been born in Yugoslavia before the wars, there was some concern about what kind of welcome the Serbs would get from their hosts in Split. But apart from some hecklers in the crowd, it was uneventful off court. On court, the Serbs triumphed by a 4-1 margin, with all their wins coming in straight sets.
This victory—as well as those that followed, culminating in a championship tie played in front on twenty-thousand spectators packed into Belgrade Arena—marked a turning point not only for several members of the Davis Cup team but also for me.
Initiated into playing tennis by both parents and into being a tennis fan by my father, I’d been casually involved with the sport since childhood. Trips to the neighborhood court brought all manner of lessons, not merely in groundstroke technique but in sportsmanship as well. To this day, I can’t step on a tennis court without hearing my dad’s voice—at one moment, admonishing me for not returning balls directly to my opponent when it was his or her turn to serve; at another, expressing pleasant surprise at how well I hit a backhand. In the late ‘70s and ‘80s, the later rounds of majors were broadcast on network tv and I was allowed to stare at the screen for longer than usual. One of the first philosophical disagreements I recall having with my father concerned the on-court antics of John McEnroe: while we both admired Bjorn Borg and disliked Jimmy Conners, we were divided over the American who had earned his nickname “SuperBrat.” The introductory music NBC chose for their “Breakfast at Wimbledon” program still transports me back to our shared time in front of the tv—not quite as powerful or as sentimental as Proust’s madeleine, perhaps, but something like it. Though I rooted for Martina Navratilova and enjoyed seeing other WTA players in action, my early fandom reached its peak when Boris Becker—like me, a teenager—smashed his serve and threw his body around the grass courts at Wimbledon in the mid-‘80s.
In 1986, the year “Boom Boom” Becker won Wimbledon for a second time, another player in the men’s draw caught my eye. Though it’s the case that he was the stereotypical “tall, dark, and handsome” type of romance novels, I was attracted less by his features or physique than by his name—one bound to tie the tongues of Anglophone commentators. Because he shared my father’s first name, Slobodan (a name which would become infamous within a few years for reasons having nothing to do with tennis), I knew that meant he also shared his homeland. Growing up as an “ethnic” American, I was accustomed to people using Yugoslavia as a punchline: the long name, obscure location, and ambiguous geopolitical position, never mind the compact car, were the source of much teasing in the waning days of the Cold War. (One coach affectionately called me “half-breed,” something unimaginable today.) But Yugoslav passion for and prowess in sports were no joke. For one thing, Sarajevo had hosted the winter Olympics in 1984, while I was in high school. For another, the country had been collecting medals in team sports for decades: football, handball, volleyball, water polo, and (above all for an American) basketball. So, I had already experienced both collective exhilaration and cultural pride as a spectator of European championships and Summer Olympics. But since “Bobo” Živojinović was the first Yugoslav tennis player of whom I was aware, seeing him advance to the singles semifinal at Wimbledon—and, later that summer, win the men’s doubles trophy at the US Open—ignited a new feeling in me.
My favorite sport being played by people with names like mine, speaking the language I’d learned by communicating with my grandmother? That was something special. The rise and dominance of Monica Seles a few years later—she first won the French Open as a 16-year-old in 1990—was even more significant. Before she was stabbed by an unstable fan of one of her rivals, Seles had won eight grand slam titles playing under the Yugoslav flag.
Of course, all of this happened before the violent breakup of Yugoslavia—and before my ethnic identity became a source of shame rather than pride. As a child, I heard countless stories about both the traumatic events and heroic exploits of the two World Wars in which Serbs had fought alongside the Allies. In the center of our village, there was a monument bearing the names of both my grandfather and great-grandfather; their portraits, in uniform, hung in our living room. During our summer trips, I felt just as comfortable on Croatia’s Adriatic coast as in rural Serbia. At home in the DC suburbs, my parents hosted an annual “slava” celebrating our patron, Saint Nicholas, at which ex-pats from all over Yugoslavia outnumbered the Americans. Serbo-Croatian, spoken abroad, was like a secret language that only a select few could understand. And even though I’d had to correct the pronunciation of my name the first time the teacher called roll in every class for my entire school life, having such strong ties to another culture and what felt like a permanent home in a different country—as opposed to the various apartments, duplexes, and houses where we’d lived in California, Ohio, and Maryland—had always grounded me.
When the Serbian team became Davis Cup champions in December 2010, I felt something unfamiliar: pride in the part of myself that I’d tried to keep at a distance for nearly two decades. In retrospect, it seems unsurprising that when Novak Djoković began the 2011 season not just by winning the Australian Open but by going unbeaten for weeks, then months, totaling 41 matches and 7 titles in a row, I was hooked. No longer dependent on network or even cable tv, I watched every one of his matches during the first part of the season on my desktop monitor thanks to digital streams. At least weekly, I would call my father with updates or send him links to online coverage of the winning streak. Then, just a few days before my birthday, Djoković won Wimbledon, beating Rafael Nadal for the fifth time that year, and took over the top spot. Within the month, I had put my job search on hold and written my first piece about tennis. Within two months, I had booked a flight to Belgrade and talked my way into media credentials for the Davis Cup semifinal against Argentina.
In an interview during that September week in Serbia, Djoković recalled his twelfth birthday in 1999, during which NATO bombs dropped on his hometown, observing: “The war made me a better person because I learned to appreciate things and to take nothing for granted. The war also made me a better tennis player because I swore to myself that I’d prove to the world that there are good Serbs, too.” It didn’t require twenty major titles and countless other records for Djoković to prove that there are good Serbian tennis players. Indeed, that had likely been established as a fact long before he made the promise to himself. But the burden of representing a twenty-first century Serbia to the world is one that he and, to a lesser degree, the other members of the golden generation still carry. It’s why tennis, for them, is more than a game.
Yesterday, the Serbian tennis federation (Teniski Savez Srbije, or TSS) announced the selection of Viktor Troicki to be the national team’s new Davis Cup captain. This decision came as a surprise to most tennis observers in Serbia, as well as to the captain of the last four years, Nenad Zimonjić. In their press release, the TSS said that the federation’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to appoint Troicki to a four-year term based on a proposal from a commission for the selection of the Davis Cup captain. (Thought the Board members are listed on the TSS website, and include one familiar name in Goran Djoković, Novak’s uncle, it isn’t clear who sits on the relevant commission.) They briefly thanked Zimonjić for his service before turning to a review of Troicki’s career highlights, starting with his heroics in the 2010 Davis Cup final against France and skipping his year-long suspension for breach of the ITF’s anti-doping rules.
In a lengthy statement posted on Twitter, Zimonjić expressed his dismay not only at the TSS decision itself but also at the process that led to it. According to Zimonjić, the players knew both that he wanted to stay on in his role and that the deadline for applicants for the captain position was October 24. At that time, he was informed by the TSS that he was the only candidate who met the criteria. Then, a week later, he received a phone call from Troicki himself telling him that other players had met in Paris, presumably during the Masters tournament there, and expressed a wish for him to be their new captain. On November 3, Zimonjić learned that the players had submitted a special request to the TSS and that the Board of Directors agreed to extend the application deadline by more than a month, giving Troicki time to collect his thoughts and put them on paper.
When Troicki contacted Zimonjić with the update some six weeks ago, he didn’t offer any “concrete reasons” why the players wanted a change. Nor, apparently, has anyone else, at least so far. Zimonjić claims that at no point this year—one that started with Serbia lifting the inaugural ATP Cup in Sydney—did players raise concerns, express dissatisfaction with his leadership, or indicate a desire to replace him. He continues: “Throughout the years, I tried to help all our players and be a support to them at all times, not only during Davis Cup competition but in every situation (I had excellent communication with all of them, supported them, followed their development, and was there for them with help).” Zimonjić further notes that he played alongside “4-5 different generations of players, starting from the very bottom level of Davis Cup competition [after then-Yugoslavia was relegated from the World Group due to sanctions] and going all the way to the title of world champions in 2010,” enumerating the various roles he has performed over his two and a half decades on the Serbian team: “singles player, doubles player, playing captain (in 2003-04), mentor, and. . . an older brother (as someone 8-15 years older than other members of the team, that’s how I behaved).” Zimonjić, who received the ITF’s Award of Excellence when Serbia made their second Davis Cup final in 2013, holds team records for doubles wins (30-19), overall wins (43-31, beating out Djoković & Tipsarević, who are tied at 34), and ties played (55).
Viktor Troicki and Nenad Zimonjić celebrate a doubles win against Spain in the 2017 Davis Cup quarterfinals.
In an interview published today in Sportski Žurnal (but conducted before Zimonjić posted his comments on social media), Troicki acknowledged that he didn’t expect this responsibility now, before the end of his playing career, and that he had “very mixed feelings” when he first got the news. However, while he was initially surprised by the development, the new role represents a dream come true for the 34-year-old and he feels “honored to have been selected”: when the players choose you, he explained, “that’s not something you refuse.” As for the reasons prompting this decision, Troicki didn’t offer much detail: “We’re all grateful to Zimonjic, who was an excellent captain.” “There were no disagreements, simply a need to refresh and change” after many years, he added, pointing to recent overhauls to leadership on other Serbian national teams, like football (soccer), as if to say that change is everywhere.
As for Zimonjić, he declined to speak to Vojin Veličković when the long-time Serbian tennis writer contacted him on Thursday night. It seems the TSS hadn’t bothered to inform him of their decision, leaving it to the journalist—who, like other beat reporters, had received an email from them some six hours earlier—to convey the bad news. Later, Veličković reflected on this lapse in collegiality: “Who would be a better captain is a professional question, and the federation has the right to its assessment; but whether one should inform someone about the outcome of his application and tell him that he’s no longer a part of a competition to which he’s dedicated a quarter-century of his life is a human one.” Although Zimonjić hasn’t officially retired, it’s tough to read yesterday’s comments as anything but an end to a significant chapter, if not a farewell.
Our excellent results were also the consequence of excellent teamwork. The team members and the national team’s results were always my top priority. I tried to convey that to all the players as well: what it means to be a national team member, to represent your team and country, and to contribute as an individual to a greater goal.
My desire was always to represent Serbia in the best possible way and in the best light, to give our nation reasons to be proud and happy, to all rejoice together and celebrate our shared historical successes!
To all players, I wish good luck and great success in the future, both in individual and in team competition.
Big greetings to all sports lovers and our loyal fans, our people who have rooted for us all these years at competitions in Serbia and around the world, with whom we managed to celebrate great successes and share many beautiful moments, for which I’m especially glad.
With wishes for many more reasons for celebration in the future: let’s go, Serbia!
Particularly given that Serbia hosts no ATP tour events, who knows when the veteran doubles specialist, who as of his last interview was still attempting to make a comeback from bilateral hip replacement surgery, will next appear before a home crowd. What comes across in his typed statement is a mix of pride, principle, bemusement, and sadness. “For me,” Zimonjić writes, “it was always a great honor, privilege, and responsibility to represent my country and my people, and to contribute as a member of the national team.” After listing his best results at team events, including four appearances at the Olympics, he observes, “I’m very proud of all these accomplishments, as well as of the fact that the players chose me to be the captain for both Davis Cup and the ATP Cup. In that regard, I was sure that my expertise, experience, knowledge—and therefore my function as team captain—wouldn’t be in question.” Like the now-former captain, readers of the public comments from Serbian tennis insiders are left without answers to the key questions: namely, why replace Zimonjić now? Perhaps above all, why—after all his contributions to the sport and given the apparent closeness among members of the team—do it in this way?
Friends, can we talk about causal reasoning—and causation, more generally?
This isn’t what we usually turn to tennis to do, I realize, but some of the arguments circulating in the wake of the Adria Tour, especially after four participants (plus team and family members) tested positive for covid-19 early last week, have hurt my brain. More than giving me a headache, though, this stuff isn’t good for our understanding of the event and its consequences—or of the figure at the center of the controversy. Odd a response though this may be, reading some of the initial analysis sent me scrambling for a textbook I used to assign in a course at the University of Richmond.* After refreshing my memory on the topic of rival causes, a term for “a plausible alternative explanation [for] why a certain outcome occurred,” I decided to identify a couple of patterns I’ve observed in the assessments of what went wrong with the Adria Tour.
Diction like this is a sign that causal thinking is afoot.
A Tennis Channel segment reacting to the news of Novak Djoković’s covid-19 diagnosis provides us with a convenient starting point for discussion.
During the exchange, Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim asked Paul Annacone how he thinks the developments from the truncated Balkan tennis tour will play in the locker-room. The coach and commentator replied, “I think there’s a lot of [Novak’s] peer group that are scratching their heads.” “If I were on the [ATP Player] Council,” Annacone added, “I would be asking a lot of difficult questions to understand how he got to where he was.” Even before the ATP #1 reunites with his colleagues, we’ve had plenty of tennis media attempting to answer these very questions—some, like Annacone, with the benefit of having interviewed the Serbian player recently, and others by putting at least a few puzzle pieces together on their own.
Not only because I could use some exercise after being stuck at home for months, I think it’s worth walking through what we know about the Adria Tour and what we don’t. Given journalism’s primary function, some combination of these two categories forms the basis of the descriptive claims we see in virtually any media response, whether it’s straightforward reporting, a column offering an interpretation of events, or a debate about how professional tennis should proceed as it returns (spoiler: not like this). So, let’s start with the basics. Journalism 101 tells us there are five questions news stories need to answer: who, what, when, where, and why. With regard to this event, the first four are easy to answer—and they’re not up for much, if any, debate.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things we know about the Adria Tour (“AT”):
The traveling tournament was conceived by Novak Djoković and designed to bring tennis to several ex-Yugoslav countries over four weeks. In addition to being the one with the money & influence to make it happen, the host was responsible for inviting the featured players—most notably, the top-20 talent.
It occurred during what I’ll call “phase 2” of a global pandemic: i.e., when most countries have lifted restrictions on public movement and activities (to differing degrees & with varying levels of success).
The AT ended up taking place over two consecutive June weekends in Serbia and Croatia.
It was planned & run by an organizing committee led, at least nominally, by director Djordje Djoković. Each stage of the event had a separate tournament director & sub-committee: for example, Goran Ivanišević was TD and Neven Nakić, VP of the Croatian tennis federation, was the president of the organizing committee for the Croatian stop.
Round-robin, short-format matches were broadcast on regional network Sport Klub, as well as internationally on Eurosport, Tennis Channel, and beINSports.
The Serbian and Croatian tennis federations, who helped organize the first two stages of the AT, also held tournaments for regional players in the weeks leading up to the main events in Belgrade and Zadar, respectively.
Subsequent stops were being planned in the two biggest Bosnian cities: Banja Luka & Sarajevo. Particularly after an anticipated third leg in Montenegro had to be scrapped (because the government couldn’t guarantee entry from Serbia in time), organizers scouted other possible locations in the former Yugoslavia.
While the marquee players traveled from abroad to participate, most others hail from, and were already in, the region. (Djoković and his family, who had spent several months isolating in Marbella, Spain, arrived in Serbia three weeks before the official tournament start.)
In addition to the on-court action, there were press conferences, kids days, concerts, fireworks, & other affiliated group activities, at which neither mask wearing nor social distancing was widely observed.
Thus far, some 8 Adria Tour participants (& at least two of their spouses) have tested positive for covid-19.
Turning to “why,” answering questions gets more complicated. Why did Djoković want to host this tournament? Why now? Why in Serbia and the neighboring countries? (The first part is easy, obviously; the second part is more complicated, as this article suggests. I’ll have more to say about Novak’s motivations in a separate post.) Why did he invite players from Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, and Russia (several of whom had been staying in the US since Indian Wells was canceled in early March &/or made other stops en route to Belgrade), instead of sticking with an all-Serbian or even all-Balkan contingent? Why did the event have a) live spectators, b) so many of them, &/or c) so close together? Why, despite having masks (and gloves!) available at entrances, wasn’t more done to encourage or enforce use of them among event staff, volunteers, spectators, or participants? And the question everyone’s been asking: why all the hugging?!
Cultural interlude…
I could go on, but you get the point. The overarching question that emerges is: why, given what is common knowledge about how the coronavirus spreads, did this event take the particular shape it did—on court, in the stands, across the tournament grounds, and after hours? For what it’s worth, I don’t think “Because it was allowed by the local authorities” is a sufficient answer. That the tournament was given a green light by the powers that be is clear—and that Belgrade nightclubs weren’t specially opened for the player party should be evident to anyone looking at photos. But those facts don’t really help us understand why so many people—and not, by the way, just a dozen or so players—were acting like they’d found a time-traveling portal to the pre-covid era.
Although it’s not an official, alliterative part of journalism’s “5 Ws,” the question “how” is, of course, also relevant. For instance: how did this happen? By that, I mean both “What went into planning the Adria Tour?” and “How did an event like this, with few to no precautionary measures in place, occur in June 2020?” How were all the organizational and logistical tasks divided and decided? For that matter, how many and which regional tennis figures were on the organizing committee? With whom from the Serbian and Croatian governments did organizers coordinate? What shared attitudes or beliefs contributed to thousands of people, seemingly without concern, going along with it all—not once, either, but in ten separate sessions in two different (albeit culturally quite similar) countries? One of the things a lot of the international coverage has missed, or perhaps ignored, is just how many people were involved in this event. While it’s understandable that the focus would be on Djoković and his high-profile ATP guests, there were also hundreds of people behind the scenes helping the show go on and a whole crew of regional broadcasters and print journalists on hand to capture the scene, not to mention all the people in the stands, whose main expression of disappointment in all of this was to boo when local sports hero Ivanišević took to the court to announce the Zadar final between Djoković and Rublev had to be called off. Were people in Serbia and Croatia—whether press or public—also shocked and outraged by what they observed of the Adria Tour? Are folks in Bosnia breathing a collective sigh of relief that their leg of the event won’t happen? If not, why not?
Without having access to sources on the ground (or being able to read BCS), it’s tough to answer most of these “how” questions. In spite of this obstacle, I’ve seen a lot of people trying to explain what happened, often by making descriptive claims based on assumptions and deductions based on limited information.
Sidebar: I’ll take advantage of this moment to ride a hobby-horse of mine. A serious shortcoming I see in tennis journalism and the online tennis community’s discourse isn’t that most of it happens in English, though that’s true of the latter. Rather, it’s that there is not nearly as much cross-cultural collaboration and exchange as this uniquely international sport demands. Read more…
On some level, all the questions above are secondary: it’s not hard to imagine readers who’ve gotten this far wondering, “Who cares about this minutiae? The only thing that matters about the Adria Tour is that it was a mistake!” Well, yes. That’s certainly true if all we’re interested in doing is making a judgment, which I think virtually everyone has already done (isn’t Twitter grand?). Me? I also like to try to understand things—including the reactions to them, by media in particular. And I get more than a little uncomfortable when I see analysis that seems to skip the asking questions stage (call it “curiosity”) and go directly to reaching conclusions, not least if the outcome suggests logical short-cuts along the way. By now, you may have gathered that this is not a complaint unique to the treatment of a single event: the general terms I use below can be applied to virtually any piece of writing that makes an argument, from tweet to thesis.
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Without further ado (there’s been plenty of ado already, I know), here are three patterns I’ve observed in coverage of the Adria Tour aftermath: causal oversimplification, post hoc fallacy, and fundamental attribution error.
Since all three have to do with causal reasoning, let’s establish some common ground. When we think about causation, it takes this basic form: this because that.
To give a generic example: effect B was brought about, at least in part, by cause A.
Broadly speaking, we can say that the Adria Tour (A) caused participants (and perhaps others) to become infected with covid-19 (B).
The main deduction that people have made on the basis of photographic evidence of participant activity at A is that a key factor, C—the lack of precautionary measures like mask wearing and social distancing—caused the spread of the virus within the group. Though this seems like an uncontroversial conclusion to me, it’s also the case that we have very little idea of these individuals’ activities either in the days before June 11 (the first day all the participants were together in Belgrade) or when they were not in front of tv or other kinds of cameras. With that qualification, let’s move on to examples of where some, perhaps required by the nature of the profession to publish quick takes, got tripped up by gnarly causal reasoning.#
So, what caused factor C? Almost in unison, the international media answered: Novak Djoković, of course! From there, we’ve gotten different explanations for how and why Novak ended up where he did on June 23rd: covid-positive, isolating at home in Belgrade, and in the sports section of every major media outlet in the world.
Unlike surreal fanless exhibitions conducted elsewhere on earth, the Adria Tour looked like it was held in the peaceful obliviousness of some other planet. Djokovic maintained that the event fell in line with Serbian guidelines, a claim that has come under fire, and that also makes you wonder bleakly about his sheer force of personality back home.
The “sheer force” of Novak’s personality caused the Serbian health authorities to adjust their guidelines for public gatherings in May and June? His influence is what led thousands of spectators to decline to wear masks that the tournament itself provided? Is that what this line is suggesting? As long as we’re speculating, did the pied piper of Serbia also compel some 25 thousand people to pack Belgrade’s “Marakana” for the soccer grudge match between Partizan and Red Star a few days before the Adria Tour started? Might there be any other viable explanations for these deeds? Out of curiosity, what else has AleksandarVučić’s government been up to over the past few months—that is, other than granting Djoković last-minute permission to sell more than a thousand tickets to each session of the Belgrade stop? And let’s not forget about Croatia. Has the pandemic forced them to abandon all hope for the summer tourist season, which brings in some 20% of the country’s GDP? (To get a sense of how things were looking in Zadar in the weeks before the Adria Tour came to town, see the second half of this article.)
In lieu of spending more time unpacking this piece, I’ll just leave the above explanations here.
Exhibit B is from a Twitter thread by a tennis journalist especially influential on social media.
This one-two punch—bad news followed by a tidy explanation for it—implies “after this, therefore because of this.” Though the causal connection isn’t made explicit, it is nevertheless unmistakable: fringe scientific beliefs resulted in Novak and Jelena’s being at increased risk for catching covid-19.
So there’s no misunderstanding, I’ll say this as clearly as I can: personal opinions are certainly relevant in shaping the behavior of those who have them. But unless every other person associated with the Adria Tour is also pals with a bearded wellness guru from California, this account only gets us so far. Also, however “alternative” some of the Djoković views on health, they didn’t stop the pair from urging people in Serbia to stay home during the quarantine so healthcare providers wouldn’t be overburdened with patients or from using their foundation money to purchase ventilators for Serbian hospitals. These are things they likely wouldn’t do if they don’t think the coronavirus is a serious threat or believe that positive thinking, room-temperature water, and a teaspoon of manuka honey to start the day is enough to ward it off. Also: crystals. Don’t forget the crystals.
Exhibit C is a column by Jon Wertheim. Reacting to the announcement of Djoković’s positive covid-19 test, the SI senior writer and Tennis Channel studio analyst crafted a cautionary tale modeled on Greek mythology, in which the ATP #1 serves as a sort of modern-day Icarus. Unlike the tragic finality of the classics, however, this story remains open-ended: “there are chapters left to be authored,” Wertheim notes before suggesting a few ways Novak might “make amends” for his recent lapses and “win back” whatever—or whomever—he’s lost thus far this season. Instead of quoting at length, I encourage you to read it, as it’s a much more creative piece of writing than we generally get from tennis journalists. (You can find the less-creative version of Wertheim’s thoughts on the Adria Tour fallout in his weekly podcast.)
I have no quarrel with the poetic license Wertheim takes and think his narrative gets its message across in an entertaining, self-consciously dramatic manner. (It’s a tragedy, after all.) Having said that, the emphasis on the explanatory power of the contents of Novak Djoković’s head strikes me as an example of a what psychologists call fundamental attribution error: a cognitive bias “in which we typically overestimate the importance of personal tendencies relative to situational factors in interpreting the behavior of others. That is, we tend to see the cause of others’ behavior as coming from within (their personal characteristics) rather than from without (situational forces)” (126*). Abundant in the short tale are terms like “hubris,” “self-belief,” “narcissism,” and “self-importance”—as much the language of personality science (if not psychopathology) as mythology. Given not only the humanitarian nature of the venture (with the winner’s prize money going to a charity of his choice) but also Djoković’s desire to both provide lower-ranked regional players an opportunity to compete and earn some much-needed cash and bring top-tier tennis to a part of the world that doesn’t normally get it, it’s tough to accept the notion that the event aimed for self-glorification. Not least, the Balkans is the last place on earth where Novak would need to do anything to be greeted with immense affection, admiration, even gratitude. There are much easier ways for him to get showered with praise: for instance, he could stand in Trg Republike, Belgrade’s central square.
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A common thread linking these three cases is that the explanations they provide for why the Adria Tour took the form it did and ended, perhaps inevitably, with a health crisis rely almost entirely on surmises about the goings on in the mind of an individual human being. This would be one thing if Djoković were the king of not just Serbia but the former Yugoslavia, and all subjects faced a choice between doing his bidding and being punished. (Representatives of four countries were involved in the planning! The prime minister of Croatia attended one of the Zadar sessions—likely coming from Zagreb to do so.) Closer to reality, I’d have an easier time understanding such causal oversimplification if Novak had simply invited a bunch of top-ranked tennis bros to a holiday weekend in his hometown, with practice matches on his backyard court followed by nights out on the town. But the Adria Tour isn’t a morality play with a single protagonist, nor did it take place on a billionaire’s private island. Perhaps it’d be better if it had.
Essentially, all of this boils down to one question: are Djoković’s personal views—about himself, about “science”—the cause or a cause leading to the questionable decisions on display during the Adria Tour? Granting the latter, which I hope you do, are we quite sure those beliefs were the most significant causal factor in shaping the risky behavior at the event? It’s certainly possible, perhaps even probable, that they played a part—in the players’ off-court activities, particularly. Still, even there, I suspect it was Novak’s pride not in himself but in his country that was among the strongest influences in his decision to perform as a tour-guide for his guests from abroad. Despite the circumstances that had brought them there, it seems he wanted to give his rivals, colleagues, and friends a weekend to remember: showing them the sights, making sure they tasted a bit of Balkan hospitality, and, yes, giving them a sense of why Belgrade’s nightlife has the reputation it does. (My guess: they’ll remember.)
Given that the event itself wasn’t merely a debauched weekend among members of the men’s tennis elite, and that thousands of people attended, staffed, or helped organize the event, we have to consider what other factors may have contributed to the outcomes observed on screens both large and small across the globe. I’ve hinted at a few possibilities from the spheres of politics and economics above (in links under Exhibit A). Here are some others that aren’t unique to the Balkans: skepticism about expertise; the politicization of science; a less-than-healthy media ecosystem (including sensationalism, propaganda, and misinformation); lack of trust in leadership; public frustration with, even resentment about, months under lockdown; and lovely spring weather. Though the increasingly rare opportunity to watch live tennis featuring both local favorites and international stars surely drew the crowd, many other factors likely determined the incautious behavior in the stands and on the grounds in Belgrade and Zadar. To be fair, tennis journalism isn’t suited to explore all of the potential causes of multifaceted occurrences like this: sports reporters are generally on site or watching from home, not embedded as foreign correspondents. Normally, we talk about what happens between the lines on court, in the media center, at the gym, and in the board rooms of the ITF, ATP, and WTA. For good measure, we check players’ Twitter and Instagram feeds. The coronavirus pandemic has not only deprived us all of the sport we love but also given us a whole new set of concerns to ponder—separate from the ways in which it’s turned the rest of our lives upside down. Still, wouldn’t it be something if we could take a bit of the extra time many of us, unable to pursue our professions or pastimes as before, now have to seek out and consider a few more causes?
# I hope it goes without saying that I selected these three examples not out of any personal animus for the authors but because they come from widely-read sources and help make my point. Although its length suggests otherwise, this is not an exhaustive survey of English-language coverage of the Adria Tour. A little scary, I know.
I took advantage of a paragraph break in my post about coverage of the Adria Tour to ride a hobby-horse of mine—briefly, I thought. But then the aside got long enough to merit space of its own.
Story time: At the 2014 US Open, and as he was being escorted out of the main interview room, I asked Grigor Dimitrov how often he encounters Bulgarian journalists at tour events outside his home country. Answer: never. The same year, a handful of Serbian media provided most, if not all, of the native-language coverage of Marin Čilić’s run to the final because no representative of the Croatian media was credentialed. Either their applications had been rejected by the USTA or, given Čilić had made only one major semifinal to date (at the 2010 Australian Open), Croatian outlets didn’t think it was worth the cost or effort of sending anyone—though I suspect it’d be worth the effort if not for the cost. Imagine: you win your first grand slam title and none of the journalists who’ve followed your career most closely are there to witness or talk to you about it.
A serious shortcoming I see in tennis journalism and the online tennis community’s discourse isn’t that most of it happens in English, though that’s true of the latter. Rather, it’s that there is not nearly as much cross-cultural collaboration and exchange as this uniquely international sport demands. Here are the contributing factors that come immediately to mind: three out of four majors take place in the Anglosphere, the transcribed portion of player press conferences are in English, and very little of the tennis writing produced in languages other than English gets translated and circulated widely. The fact that, sadly, many native English speakers are monolingual means that the work of translation, rewarding though it can be, falls on the rest of the tennis world. (Let me pause to note that I give myself little, if any, credit for speaking more than one language: it’s pure chance that I was born into a bicultural family and that communicating with my beloved grandmother required at least one of us adapt; further, my adventures with Spanish in high school, Russian in college, and French in grad school taught me that it is very difficult to maintain skills in any language you don’t speak both regularly and outside the classroom.) Add to the aforementioned factors the economic realities of the global sports market—for tennis, in general, and tennis journalism, in particular—and the problem is exacerbated. Have I mentioned the travel expenses for attending a single tournament, never mind following the tour’s progress from one continent to another (and sometimes back again), over the course of a season?
As a result of all of the above, both journalists and fans around the world have limited access to much of the coverage of non-Anglophone players—which is, let’s be honest, most of the top ranks. On the ATP side, 79 of the 100 best players—including the entire top 10 and 18 of the top 20—are non-native English speakers; on the WTA, it’s 77 out of the top 100. Similar percentages aside, these demographics are especially significant on the men’s tour, where the exceptions to the rule in the top 20 are both multilingual children of immigrants (Canada, eh?). Not only have the Williams sisters been a near-constant presence at the top of the women’s game for over twenty years, the WTA has also had other Anglospheric talent, from Lindsay Davenport at the turn of the century to Ashleigh Barty today, with plenty of others in supporting roles. A list of recent slam winners includes Sloane Stephens, Bianca Andreescu, and Sofia Kenin; Naomi Osaka, still more comfortable in English than Japanese, is a poster child for tennis multiculturalism. With the ATP, well, it’s a different story. Before Andy Murray, who secured the top spot in the final moments of the 2016 season, Lleyton Hewitt in 2001-02 and Andy Roddick in 2003 were the last Anglophone year-end #1s (with an honorary mention going to Andre Agassi, who spent 12 weeks ranked #1 in the fall of 2003). Arguably, then, international tennis journalism—to the extent that such a thing exists and isn’t merely another way of saying “journalistic dispatches from the Anglosphere”—is lagging over a decade behind the sport.
Consider the most relevant example for my purposes (recall, this is hypothetically, if not technically, an aside): the coverage of one Novak Djoković. Recently, he sat for a number of interviews to discuss the Adria Tour, the prospect of a 2020 US Open, and other timely topics. As a reference point, compare the length of these appearances: a podcast with tennis commentators (58 min.) and a late-night tv variety show (47 min.) in Serbian, both recorded before the event kicked off, and conversations in English on Eurosport (5 min.) and Tennis Channel (two parts, 13 min.) once the action was underway. Like most people, Novak is more comfortable speaking in his mother tongue (and, not incidentally, with people he trusts)—and this is generally reflected in the material he provides his hometown media.
The trouble is, though they might transcribe parts of these interviews for quoting in print, no Balkan sports journalist needs to translate them; in the tennis media world beyond, almost no one can. So, such efforts are left either to Serbian journalists who take the time to share excerpts with his/her international Twitter following (hey, Saša Ozmo!) or to fans. With all due respect to the energy dedicated fans from across the globe put into this sort of thing, they’re neither experienced journalists nor trained translators. In the case of printed articles, many are reliant upon Google translate—which, as I likely don’t need to tell you, is better with some languages than others. If you’re not actually fluent in both languages, you can get a lot wrong using this method.
Can someone help me out by translating this? Please tell me it doesn't actually say Djoković was "dancing in leather in a bowling alley." https://t.co/E2LwypRDmr
The upshot of all of this is that Anglophone tennis media miss out on some of the most substantive comments made by not just the ATP #1 but, in fact, many players speaking in their native languages. By way of conclusion, here are two selections from the televised chat with Ivan Ivanović, one summarized and the other translated.
1) Regarding the origins of the Adria Tour: this event grew out of conversations between Djoković and the national tennis federation in early May, when he was still in Spain. While much of the rest of the world was locked down, Serbia was already starting to open up. Specifically, Novak saw an opportunity in the relatively low covid-19 numbers back home and was interested in using the courts at his eponymous tennis center to put on spectator-less tournaments for male and female players from the region, so that they could get in some competitive matches and earn a bit of money. As he was aware from ATP player council conversations and various social-media posts, players outside the top 100 were struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic—with some, he noted, referencing a (British?) WTA player, even putting their racquets down and taking other jobs to survive. Acknowledging that for him and other top players, this break from the official tour wasn’t a financial blow with any day-to-day impact, he was looking to find ways—beyond the player relief fund—to help.
Starting at the end of May, the TSS organized small tournaments (but not so small that some of them didn’t also have qualifying rounds!) in several Serbian cities, including the capital. One such tournament, of course, took place in Belgrade in the days leading up to the Adria Tour; 50,000€ of the prize-money pot came from Djoković himself—whether out of his own pocket, through his foundation, or from AT revenues, I’m not entirely sure. The men’s winner, Damir Džumhur, qualified for the final spot in the weekend spectacle; the women’s draw was won by #260 Dejana Radanović. Although the idea grew into a plan to replicate this “hybrid” tournament model across the former Yugoslavia, the Adria Tour started with a much more modest—and, I’d argue, more important—goal. How much coverage did those smaller, starless events get? You tell me.
2) Djoković notes that when he returned to Belgrade from Spain, it was hard to determine what was going on in terms of public health: “I see many people on the streets—some who, of course, take care, follow [the guidelines], and so on; but on the other hand, there are people who are [acting] completely as if nothing happened.” Asked about coming into his own as #1, his leadership role within the ATP, and the various financial donations he’s made during the coronavirus pandemic, Novak observed that being a child of the ‘90s in the former Yugoslavia (experiencing war, sanctions, & NATO bombardment) was one of the crucial features of his youth that shaped his personality. This trauma was one way—one reason—he learned to care for others: “to be aware that I’m not the only person in the world, so that everything isn’t done just for me or in my personal self-interest.” He added: “When you see poverty, and you yourself are part of it, that sort of experience simply makes you want to look at everything in life from different angles. That desire to find myself, to help, to be available, to contribute has always propelled me and propels me to this day—especially in circumstances like this, when there is a state of emergency. Though it may sound a bit ironic, for us Serbs a state of emergency is somehow a normal situation. Unfortunately. I mean, it’s tough. . . everyone abroad is complaining [about the lockdown, e.g.]; but for us, having lived through the ‘90s, this is normal. It was always a state of emergency.”
I spoke to the Serbian skipper after Tuesday’s practice session at the Caja Mágica.
AM: Watching the team practicing yesterday, the mood seemed like a good combination of light-hearted & having fun with a sense of purpose. What’s your sense of how everybody’s feeling?
NZ: Yeah, of course. The thing is, at the end of the season, you’ve got to motivate the guys. We know each other quite well and we joke around. But when it comes to the practice and playing, it’s very serious, with a lot of attention to details, what we can improve, and fine tuning at the end. I believe that they’re all ready and adjusted to the surface. The atmosphere is really good on the team, which is the most important thing because players need to use all their energy at the end of the year, which is not easy after such a long season. So, I’m happy with our preparation and looking forward to our first match tomorrow.
AM: The singles part of it seems relatively straightforward. I noticed you were practicing in different configurations for the doubles & you were giving targeted advice to the guys, who are less experienced than you are in that regard. So, I’m curious if they’re still “auditioning” for a spot or are you close to a decision?
NZ: It’s a combination of factors: who’s playing well in these conditions, the match-ups, how the players are feeling physically. So, I would say though it’s quite simple for the singles, for the doubles there could be some tactical decisions. We won’t know for sure until the very end because you never know what could happen when the guys wake up tomorrow morning. Hopefully, everything is ok. But in my mind, I have a clear decision.
AM: And you don’t actually have to announce the doubles team until…?
NZ: Only 15 minutes before the match—and the whole team, I have to nominate one hour before; so, at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.
AM: What are the chances we’re going to see Janko on court this week?
NZ: Not just to give him a chance to play—because he played so much for our country, so many matches. [Note: Tipsarević first played Davis Cup as a 16-year-old in 2000, when Serbia was playing in Group III, and holds the team record for the most singles wins, with 34.] So, if he can help the team, yes; but otherwise, it’s just nice to be together here even though it’s his last tournament.
AM: Given we’re in Madrid, not in Belgrade, do you have much expectation of support coming from Serbia?
NZ: You’re always hoping that you’ll have good support. We don’t know. But Novak has fans all over the world, so hopefully we as a team will get support. We’re playing indoors and it’s quite acoustic in there; so, I hope they’re going to be loud, whatever the numbers are.
By the time I arrived in Miami, Dušan Lajović was already well practiced at waiting. Although he’d lost in the final round of qualifying two days earlier, he was hanging around Crandon Park, next in line to get into the main draw of the Sony Open as a “Lucky Loser.” Spending all day on site, waiting for a message that might not come, Lajović had time to talk at length about recent developments in his life on the ATP tour. (An edited Serbian version of this interview was published by B92.)
When we met in a small room under the stadium court, Lajović was, at #89, the de facto Serbian men’s number two player due to the absence of both Janko Tipsarević and Viktor Troicki from competition. Just that week, he’d had dinner in a local Chinese restaurant with Troicki, then training in Miami, and posted his Davis Cup teammate’s fortune on Twitter.
But it is Tipsarević whom he credits with being among the biggest influences on his young career: not only does Lajović share Janko’s manager (Dirk Hordorff) and clothing sponsor (Fila) but the older player also serves as a mentor, providing court-side advice and general insight about existence as a professional tennis player. Though Tipsarević was obviously disappointed not to be able to compete in the Davis Cup finals, he is likely proud of the way his protégé has performed, both in his November debut at the Belgrade Arena and during the first months of the new year. It was this stretch of time that “Dutzee” and I discussed in most detail.
*******
AM: This has been a season of “firsts” for you: qualifying for your first main draw of a major, first win at a Slam, first entry in the top 100, first time playing as Serbia’s #1 in Davis Cup, first main draw at a Masters series event, maybe even the first opportunity to travel with a physiotherapist (Stefan Duell, whose services he also shares with Janko). Out of all these firsts, what stands out to you—which achievement means the most?
DL: I would say that qualifying for a Slam was the biggest for me, even though more came after that, since I won a round in the main draw. Last year, I was in the final round of qualifications in Paris [at Roland Garros] and I lost pretty badly. Qualifying in Australia was tough for me because there’s a lot of wind there and I’m not really used to playing in those conditions. But I was mentally strong in the qualies, even though I lost in qualies of the previous tournament (in Chennai) and was a little bit down. So, qualifying at the Australian Open took some of the pressure off; after that, I kind of relaxed and started playing much better. Then, the results kept coming: I also qualified in Rio and won a round, so I feel like I’m ready for the next level.
AM: When you think about the Australian Open, do you see that as the turning point, after which things changed, or was your success there actually proof that things had already changed?
DL: I think it’s all connected. In Australia, I also had a good draw—a wildcard in the first round [Lucas Pouille]. But that’s a lot of pressure, too, because you have to win that match. If you lose, you’re in a tough situation, even though you qualified, because you lost to a much younger guy who’s up & coming but not that experienced. So, I still needed to win that match. That win also showed me that I’m ready. A year ago, I might have lost it, but now I feel like everything is falling into place.
AM: What was more difficult: the transition from juniors to the pros or the last few years, since you entered the top 200?
DL: In juniors, during the early ITF stage, I actually wasn’t very good—nor did I play many tournaments. So, when I started playing seniors, every point I earned was a really big deal and I’d feel like, “Ok, this is going really well.”
This feeling lasted through his nineteenth birthday. By 2010, however, Lajović was having doubts. Even though he made the finals of one Futures tournament in June and won the title at another in August (results which helped him move up a hundred spots in the ATP rankings to 415), he considered going to the US for college or perhaps even quitting tennis altogether. It was the Davis Cup finals in December of that year which helped change his mind.
DL: I was there with the guys, just to experience the atmosphere and everything. And the next year, I broke into the top 200—from 430 at the beginning of 2011 to 190 by the end of the season. So, this was the biggest jump in my career.
At that point, needing a coach with the flexibility to travel with him more regularly, he split from Nemanja Lalić, who’d been guiding him for nearly seven years. Still, he says, “When I’m home in Belgrade, I always call Nemanja and we practice together. We’re really close. I think this was very important for my career, that he was not just my coach but also my friend.”
AM: So, which was harder: the period from 18 to 21 or between then and now, when you’ve reached the top 100?
DL: I think getting to the top 100 was much harder, because there’s this mental pressure that you want to break in. I was in a position to do so last summer, when I was around #115—I had some chances while playing in two different tournaments. There was a lot of pressure because I was also supposed to be earning points to get direct entrance into the US Open, so I kind of put the burden on my back and it broke. I lost in the second round at two tournaments in which I could have gone much further and slipped in the rankings.
Since that point, I told myself not to think about breaking in to the top 100—just think about becoming a better player. Once you do this, the top 100 will eventually come. When you stop thinking about whether you’re #101 or 90, I think you can improve more easily…. We’re human, so we can’t completely block these kinds of thoughts—they’re always there. But you have to try to keep it in the back of your head and put the priority on your game.
AM: Even before the Australian Open, playing your first live rubber in the Davis Cup final was a sort of “coming out” party. Although people in Serbia knew you, that was when fans and media in the rest of the tennis world were introduced to you. What are the biggest differences you’ve noticed in this new stage of your career?
Lajović vs Stepanek (photo by Srdjan Stevanović)
DL: I really felt this during Davis Cup finals. Some people would say I was thrown to the sharks, but it was a really great experience. Though I was saying this at the time, I really didn’t know what it would mean to me until more recently. My match with Stepanek is an example: even though I was losing badly, I was still fighting for every point. And this is something important that helped me play well this season—realizing that you have to stay humble until the end of the match. Even if you’re leading in a set by a break, when you get up from the bench [after a changeover], you can’t let yourself relax.
Now, even when I have a break, I run to the baseline to get another one—I think maintaining this high level of energy is one of the things that’s kept me going this season. If your opponent suddenly starts playing better, it’s not necessarily because you did anything wrong; so, you have to stay positive. In a couple of losses I’ve had this year, I think that was a big part of the problem—that I wasn’t pushing it to the limit. But if I can keep the positive energy up, I think it’ll be even better for my season and my career.
AM: You mentioned getting thrown to the sharks in Davis Cup. In terms of sharks, you’ve faced a number of them lately, starting with Tomas Berdych. Watching a match of yours in Brazil, I was thinking that you might need to get a little more mean. You seem like a nice guy and you’re very calm and level-headed on court, so there’s no need to get crazy. But, sometimes, maybe more of a killer instinct would help?
DL: Yeah, that’s true. I would say that killer instinct is coming a bit more this season. It all has to do with personality, I think. Maybe I was a little bit insecure before, but now I try to be more confident and to know what I’m worth. While it’s important not to be arrogant on the court, you have to be a fighter. Fair play is for me the number one thing during the match, but you also need to be a little bit “rude” on the court, if I can say it that way. Maybe that was a piece that I was missing, this shark instinct, and it’s very important. But I feel like it’s coming—that I’m going in the right direction.
AM: Have there been any perks to being in the top 100?
DL: Let’s face it, there aren’t many better jobs in the world than living on the tour. You get to travel a lot—ok, from one side that’s a good thing; from the other, you’re away from home for more than thirty weeks a year. But, I think that tennis players have a pretty nice life once they’re in the top 100 or top 50.
When you’re playing Challengers, you can have tournaments in some pretty small places and you need to change several planes [to get there]. When you play tour events, they’re always in big cities, so you can fly direct or maybe one connection. You also know for sure that you will have a big hotel. I’ve played a Challenger in Uzbekistan, so you can imagine what that’s like—in Qarshi, near the border of Afghanistan. There, the hotel was really bad, and the breakfast… You can never know what kind of food you’re going to get, so you’ve got to be careful. When you’re at a tour event, food is provided on site or there are good restaurants in the city.
From that side, it’s much better to play these events. And all the best players are here and you have the chance to compete against them, which is what I always dreamed of. So, I would say that as soon as I don’t have to play Challenger events, I will try not to play them, to just keep playing here—even if it means playing a bit more in qualies when I don’t get in [directly]. But now I have a good ranking, so I think this will also help me to gain more experience on the tour.
AM: Other than being able to play more highly-ranked players, and some big names, is there any difference in how people treat you—in the locker room or elsewhere?
DL: Yeah, they’re getting to know me, and everybody says “hi.” Once you get there, eventually everybody will know you. For me, it doesn’t matter if somebody in the top ten knows you and he’s your friend or if somebody’s top 500. If he’s a good person, it’s the same—he’s your friend.
AM: How about in terms of media and fan attention? How much about yourself are you interested in sharing, beyond aspects of your game?
DL: I realize that the better you get, the more people will know you and they’ll want to know more. I think it’s a good thing nowadays, with Twitter and everything. On Twitter, I’m not very active, but I try to keep my fans (as much as I have them) posted about some different things that I like.
“Little fuzzy koala”
Because I don’t think that I would just put, “Yesterday, I lost; tomorrow I play at this time…” I feel like they can find all this kind of information online, and they want to know something that’s behind the curtain, something that they could not see on tv or whatever. I still haven’t had any interviews where I get asked something personal—there are always one or two questions about what I do in my free time or something like this… which you can basically answer automatically. I didn’t have any goofy questions and I haven’t been in the tabloids*; somebody maybe posted my tweets a couple of times in the newspaper, but that’s it. So, I don’t feel any different yet.
[*Strictly speaking, this isn’t accurate. Tennis players in Serbia are frequent tabloid fodder and Lajović is no exception (here he is looking dapper during a night out with teammate Ilija Bozoljac, for example). But it’s good to know that Dutzee doesn’t spend his free time Googling himself or reading the gossip pages.]
AM: Speaking of Twitter, you usually keep it pretty light: updates about your matches, some pictures, this and that. But earlier this year, you re-tweeted an article Sergiy Stakhovsky posted—a story about British player calling it quits. Why did it seem worth sharing?
DL: I played once against Jamie Baker. I didn’t know him as a person; I saw him at tournaments, but personally we never connected. He was just there and I didn’t know what was on the other side. So, when I read the article… I don’t want to say some bad words now, but I was like, “Oh my god.” I mean, I thought, “Shit, this is bad,” you know? A tough life. This person was there and I never knew anything about it. Maybe he didn’t share with anybody, or maybe some people knew but they weren’t speaking about it. When you read it from somebody else and see how tough it is, I’m thinking, “Yeah, I’ve been through many things like this”—apart from the injuries he had.
AM: When you described playing Challengers, I thought maybe that’s why the Jamie Baker story struck you. I don’t know if this saying exists in Serbian: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Was it that sort of feeling, that it could be you? We can both point to talented guys in the top two or three hundred—on some level, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be ranked higher; on another level, we could identify the reasons, though it’s not necessarily about quality.
DL: All the guys who are [at the top] are there because they want it more than the other guys—this is my thinking. Even if you do all the things properly, there are probably some things you should do differently to get up there. Maybe you’re practicing, going to sleep, doing everything right, and at some point you’re thinking “Why am I still number 150 and not 80? I’m doing everything that all the guys who are 50 or 80 are.” But maybe you need to change something that you haven’t even thought of to get there.
I also think that your thoughts are very important in terms of going in the right direction. Because even if you do everything right, if you look at this guy and think, “Why is he there and not me?”—you should not pity yourself. It may be going badly now; but at some point, if you’re doing everything right, it will come. And if your maximum is to be at 120, then you’ve got to face it and say, “I gave it everything that I could, I’m 120, and I couldn’t do more.” But if you don’t give your maximum, you don’t know how far you can go. So, if my maximum is 89, ok, it’s 89; but when I finish my career, I will know I gave everything to get there. Right now, I can’t remember the whole article about Jamie. But apart from things you can’t control, like injury or illness, it’s all about yourself—how much you want it and how much you give to get there.
AM: Isn’t it the case, though, that unless you get to a certain point in the rankings, the financial side of the sport is pretty difficult? Where would you put that cut-off—is it where you are now? For instance, when you won that round at the Australian Open, you got the biggest paycheck of your career. How much does that help?
DL: Well, it also makes a difference in terms of not having to think about the financial situation when you travel. I would say that all the players from Serbia didn’t have a good financial status to compete regularly, in every tournament, or to travel when they were starting. So, some of them were borrowing money, and some found sponsors, but nobody had his own money to do so. This, from one side, was a good thing for us and why, as people always ask us, we’re so hungry to succeed.
But from the other side, when I was playing Futures or Challengers, there were times when I didn’t know if I could go to this or that tournament. I’m lucky to have parents who provided for me, even when they didn’t have anything—they always found a solution. I always knew the pressure, but I knew they did this because they believed in me and wanted to see me do something I like. From this point of view, I could never give up and say, “Ok, it’s hard for you guys and it’s hard for me, so now we’re quitting.” Because I know how much I gave of myself and how much they gave of themselves for me to keep playing tennis.
AM: Did you get much financial support from the Serbian tennis federation?
DL: In the years when I was young, it was difficult. The situation in our country was not good, so [the federation] didn’t have money or a system to help players. Over the years, it’s gotten better—it can always be much better. At the point when it was most important, I would say that I didn’t have the help, the resources I needed. But I wasn’t always the best player in my country, so from that side I can also realize that they didn’t see my potential. When you look at other countries, like Spain, they have like fifty guys that they sponsor. But when you’re from Serbia, you’ve got to do 90% on your own.
AM: Until what stage was your family your main support?
DL: I would say until I was top 200, but maybe even a year ago. But it all depends. I mean, I still live with my parents because I’m barely home—I travel for two months, then go home for five days. If you’re top 200, you can be top 200 [by playing] Challengers and still not earn anything, just be on the edge of covering costs. Or, you can be top 200 with maybe a few ATPs, and then you have more money than a guy who’s the same rank as you.
AM: When you won a match at the Australian Open, other than its relaxing you a bit about finances and making it possible for you to hire Stefan, did you do anything for yourself as a reward or indulgence?
DL: Not really. I mean, I don’t go shopping very often; but when I do, I’m just searching for one thing that I really need. Because I have a phone, I have a car, I have this and that… I don’t need anything special. Maybe at one point, I’ll start buying some crazy things.
AM: I don’t think that’s necessary—I just wondered if you marked the occasion.
DL: No, I didn’t. For me, the best thing is to be with people I love. Then maybe go for a nice dinner—I really enjoy good food. But I was just there with my coach; I don’t think we did anything.
I also feel like this is something I should have done earlier—winning a round [at a major]. That’s why, even though it’s big for me, I want to feel like it’s normal because I really want to do greater things. So, if I buy an expensive watch for myself when I win one round, what will I do if I win a Slam?
Doubles: Serbia vs Switzerland (photo by Srdjan Stevanović)
AM: A question about the first round of Davis Cup: if Zimonjić & Krajinović had won the doubles rubber, you would have had to play Roger Federer instead of Michael Lammer. Would you have liked to play Federer in that situation, or were you happy to get the win?
DL: No, no, I really wanted to… I think this is also a big difference from a couple months ago. When I played in the finals, I wanted to give my best; but, on some level, I think I didn’t play to beat this guy. When I played against Stanislas, I went on the court to really try to beat him, even though he just won the Australian Open.
This is also something that has improved a lot this season: that it doesn’t matter who you play, you’ve got to go on court and expect to win. Otherwise, don’t go on the court. I think that if you have this [attitude] every match, doesn’t matter against which player, then you will keep improving. Maybe I just needed this kind of experience against top-10 players to see that I need to go on court and try to beat these guys as well, not to have [too much] respect for them.
Then again, I had to play the other guy on Sunday—and we didn’t want to lose. Even though we lost [the tie against Switzerland] 3-0, I really wanted to win. [Lammer] also wanted to win and he played well—better than his ranking. So, I was happy to win this match, even though it didn’t mean anything; but it would have been much better to play Federer in a live rubber.
AM: At the beginning, we talked about some of the “firsts” you’ve recently achieved. What’s the next “first”—the next big step you’re going to take?
Two days after our conversation, Lajović got called in to replace an injured Tommy Haas, who’d received a “bye” into the second round. If his more experienced opponent, Yen-Hsun Lu, felt any relief not to be facing Haas (against whom he has an 0-2 record), that feeling wouldn’t have lasted long: the Serb got an early break and went on to take the first set 6-1. Another break early in the second proved more difficult for Dutzee to hang on to and Lu sent the match into a deciding set by winning the tiebreak.
I suspected I wasn’t the only one on Court 7 wondering whether—or to what extent— Lajović’s chances of a victory diminished when he wasn’t able to wrap up the match in two sets. As if giving voice to my doubt, a Serbian woman in the crowd urged “Dule,” as he is also known, not to rush during his first service game. His bark in reply seemed cause for concern. (As I later learned, however, this invested elder was Dušan’s mother, and his tone with her likely borne more of familiarity than frustration.) A break in the sixth game proved decisive. Despite a wobble of nerves after the umpire called for a replay of what Lajović thought was a winning point, he took the match 6-1, 6-7(3), 6-3.
Lajović serves during his win over Lu.
After he’d had a chance to recover from his three-setter against Lu, Lajović shared some thoughts about his main-draw showing. (You can read his comments in Serbian on B92.)
AM: How does it feel to be a Lucky Loser?
DL: Pretty lucky. I got the chance to play and I used it the best I could. If somebody had asked me five days ago how I’m doing, I had a totally different feeling when I lost. So, now I’m pretty happy and I appreciate that I got in… And that I played a good match last night—it’s a really good thing for me.
AM: Was it all awkward that the guy you were drawn against is someone with whom you share a physio?
DL: Yeah, we did the preseason together a couple of times and we’ve practiced many times. But, when you’re in these tournaments, you can always play against anybody; so, you’re prepared for the possibility. Then again, Stefan couldn’t watch—he was watching from the locker room, actually.
AM: You mean he couldn’t watch in the stands because he can’t cheer?
DL: It’s better if he doesn’t watch on the court—it’s his rule and we respect it. But it was ok, nothing too weird. I’ve played a few times against some people who are friends in my personal life, so it’s kind of something you have to get used to.
Fellow players Filip Krajinović & Kiki Mladenović showed up to support Lajović.
AM: Even though you didn’t have your coach or physio out there, you did have a nice little cheering section, including your mother. What’s it like when you have friends or family watching?
DL: It’s always good—I love when my family’s there. Whenever they have the chance, they come to watch me and it’s the best support I could have. So, I’m really enjoying the time and that my mother’s here.
AM: The first set went perfectly according to plan, but when the second got more complicated, there was a question about how that might affect you going forward. Were you frustrated after you lost the early break advantage?
DL: I think that the problem was that I was feeling little tired in the second set since I’ve been here all day for the last four days. I had to be here from before the first match until the last match because there was always a chance to get in. This is really tiring when you have to stay all day in the club, plus practice. So, even before the match, I wasn’t really fresh.
After I won this second-set break, I felt so tired all of a sudden. Probably I was a little bit empty, emotionally, from winning the break—and I couldn’t keep up the energy. After I lost the break, I thought, “If we go into a third [set], it will be even harder for me, and I should try to finish in two.” But this wasn’t going. So, when I lost the second set, I said, “Ok, now you know there is only one set left and you’ve got to push as much as you can.” In the end, I did it, though I was maybe even cramping in the third set a little bit.
AM: In terms of the disappointment of losing the second-set tiebreak, and heading into a third set, would you say your concerns were more physical or mental?
DL: Both—equally both. The good thing is that I was serving well in the third set. Because if we had played longer rallies, it would be even harder and I don’t know if the ending would be the same.
AM: I know fitness can be an issue with some of the younger guys—Raonić and Dimitrov, for example—especially at majors, since you aren’t as accustomed to playing longer matches. Is stamina something you’re working on?
DL: Well, I haven’t played many best-of-five; but with those I did, I didn’t have physical problems. I feel I’m pretty fit to compete on this level, though I don’t know how I’d feel when it gets to the point of playing four or five best-of-five matches in a row. But I feel I could handle it physically, because I always do a good, tough preseason in Kenya, where it’s really hot and we practice more than five hours a day. Ok, when you play a match it’s different—you get tired more because emotions are working. But I think I can handle it physically.
AM: Since your coach (Jan Velthuis) isn’t here, what do you do for match preparation?
DL: I speak with my coach over the phone—it’s not a problem. He advises me before the match and gives me tactics. We always talk after every match, so it doesn’t feel like he’s away.
AM: When you’re going into a match like tomorrow’s, do you ever target a very specific thing you’re going to work on, or is it more general?
DL: For me, it’s better when I think more generally. Because I have my own game and I always try to focus on that, and then just do things that I need and which may not be good for my opponent. When I focus on his game, I’m not doing my game as good as I should and everything breaks down.
AM: Looking forward to the match against Dolgopolov, what can you expect?
DL: Expect the unexpected, I would say. He is playing really well the last couple of weeks—doesn’t matter on hard court or on clay. He beat Rafa last week, so he’s in good shape with a lot of confidence. For me, it’ll be a big challenge to play him, first of all. I hope that I can just keep my game on a high level… For sure, I’m going to go out on the court and try to beat him, but this will be tough, especially because he’s playing so well. The only thing for me is to keep my game like I did last night, and in the previous weeks, and to manage to stay focused during the whole match. Then, I think I have a chance.
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Post-script: the unexpected took several forms in the third-round match between Dutzee and Dolgopolov. Although there were a number of welcome developments, such as the Serb’s level of play in the first and third sets, the match ended on several less pleasant notes, not least of which was a controversial call in the final set tiebreak.
Lajović handled the set-back in stride and had reason, despite a defeat seemingly snatched from the jaws of victory, to be pleased with his week. The Monday after Miami, he achieved a new career high of #78. We may see more firsts from him when he returns to his favorite surface: European clay.
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