The Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic estimated that his common experiences in previous years with the Scot Andy Murray make him the “perfect coach” for the final stretch of his sports career.
Djokovic announced last week that Murray, recently retired, was going to be his coach, with the mission of winning a record 25th Grand Slam title, something he will attempt in the first major event of 2025, in Australia.
If she achieves this, she will break the equality of 24 major titles she now has with the Australian Margaret Court.
“I was thinking about what I needed at this point in my career. I stopped training in March with my previous coach, Goran Ivanisevic, with whom I had a lot of success and with whom I worked for many years,” Djokovic explained on Sky Sports television on Friday.
“I took six months to think about it, whether I needed a coach and, if so, who it should be and what its profile should be,” he continued.
“We thought about several names and I realized that the perfect coach for me, at this point in my career, is someone who has lived the experiences that I have lived, a multiple Grand Slam champion, a former world number one. I thought of several people and the name Andy Murray came up,” he said.
Djokovic has had a disappointing 2024, in which the greatest joy was the Olympic gold in Paris.
The season has marked in a very graphic way the generational change in the ATP, with its discreet results and the retirement of Rafa Nadal, while two young people, the Italian Jannik Sinner and the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz, became the sensations of the circuit .
“I’m still going to try to be strong because I feel like my body is responding. I still have the motivation to win Grand Slams, to continue making history. That’s one of the main reasons why I asked Andy to work with me, because I still have plans and projects,” he stated.
Both Djokovic and Murray are 37 years old. Together with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal they formed the now legendary ‘Top 4’ that marked men’s tennis in the last two decades.
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