How Novak Djokovic changed his game to become the GOAT

Goran Ivanisevic has seen it happen so many times over the past four years.

His star pupil, Novak Djokovic, shows up on the practice court in a bad mood, complaining that his game is a disaster, that he needs to get better… at everything. His serve, his attacking play, even his backhand – one of the best backhands tennis has ever seen – it’s all a mess.

There is hardly any recognition for the CV, the 24 Grand Slam titles, the 74 other tour trophies and more than 1,000 match victories. He needs to improve, otherwise he’s done.

“He’s crazy,” Ivanisevic said of Djokovic, shaking his head, midway through last year, when Djokovic was in the middle of another of the best seasons any tennis player has ever had and still whining at his coach every time. .

Very good tennis players often express a desire to try to improve themselves, and Djokovic is no different. But it’s one thing to say it, and it’s another to actually do it, especially after reaching the pinnacle of the sport time and time again.

In 2015, Djokovic stormed through perhaps the most ridiculous tennis campaign any man has ever experienced. It’s the season Djokovic often mentions when asked to choose the best version of himself. That’s happening a lot now because he’s challenged the debate about the greatest man of all time – the only person who can compare Djokovic anymore is Djokovic.

He has won the most Grand Slam titles, the most Masters 1,000 titles, which are the second biggest events on the men’s tour, and has spent more weeks (406 and counting) at world No. 1 than anyone else .

He reached all four Grand Slam finals in that 2015 season, winning three (losing to Stan Wawrinka at the French Open). He went wire-to-wire as world number 1. He played in 15 consecutive finals and won 11. There was then a ‘Big Four’ that also included Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray. Djokovic went 15-4 against those three and was 4-0 against Nadal, his top rival.

Normal behavior after such a season is to just keep doing what works. Djokovic isn’t exactly exhibiting normal behavior, and he’s not really playing tennis today like he did in 2015, when he defended the court like few others could, then pulled rabbits out of the hat and won so many points that he had no business winning.

That’s a far cry from Djokovic’s winning formula last season, the one he will likely use to kick-start his 2024 in Australia this month. All of Djokovic’s best seasons have one theme: They start in January in Australia, where Djokovic is on the verge of winning an 11th Australian Open men’s singles title. Last year he won his 10th, the most in history.

He describes Australia as his “happy place,” a country where he is finding his feet, and nothing – not even pulled or torn muscles – can take him out. He hasn’t lost a match at the ‘AO’ in six years.

“It is important to have the right start, a kind of start for the rest of the season,” he said during the United Cup, the mixed team competition he played before the first Grand Slam of 2024. “The more you win in a particular tournament, the more comfortable and confident you will feel each time you arrive.”

But Djokovic’s success is about so much more than good karma. It’s about figuring out how to change his game to accommodate his aging body, which he recognizes no longer moves as well as it used to, and to keep up with the evolution of a sport that now has many is less friendly to defenders who want it. chase balls across the back of the field and pull rabbits out of hats.

With the top players hitting with more power and precision than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to defend all day, rather than trying to take the initiative and score points, at the highest level.

Djokovic has had three truly epic years: 2011, 2015 and 2023. In each of them, he won three Grand Slam finals and many other trophies.

Luckily for us, his last epic season before 2023 took place just after the revolution in advanced tennis analytics, allowing for a revealing deep dive into Djokovic then and now.

The statistics are the byproduct of ball and player tracking data collected via high-speed cameras and analyzed in real time using technology developed by a British company, TennisViz, and Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), a joint venture of the ATP Tour and ATP Media.

These combined efforts have provided fans, players and coaches with information previous generations could never have dreamed of, revealing whether a player is attacking or defending on every shot; the quality of those shots based on speed, spin and landing spot; how often they win points they shouldn’t – their so-called steal score; how clinical they are on endpoints they should win; and how often they win the all-important grassroots battles that have become so much of modern tennis.

The data tells the story of Djokovic’s evolution, from someone who specialized in winning tennis wars of attrition, to someone who now looks to attack at virtually every opportunity.

In numerical terms, the changes may seem incremental at first glance, but in a sport that yields a handful of points in every match, seemingly small changes can lead to big differences. Remember, Djokovic has won 14 of his 24 Grand Slam titles since 2015.

It starts with the serving.

Djokovic’s serve is almost unrecognizable from 2015. All props to Ivanisevic, who had a deadly serve in his playing days and has worked tirelessly with Djokovic since 2019 and achieved surprising results. Djokovic’s first serve averaged 190.1 miles per hour in 2023, up from 115.4 in 2015.

That’s not about improved racket technology or lighter balls. The tour average has hardly changed and has increased from 186.1 km/h to 116.7 km/h.

Djokovic’s serve is not only faster, but also lands in better places: five centimeters closer to the lines in 2023 than in 2015, and eight centimeters closer than the tour average. That’s important no matter what surface he’s playing on, but it can be especially powerful on the slick, fast surfaces of Melbourne Park, where serves at the sideline corners slide off the pitch almost immediately.

Djokovic has long been one of the greatest serve returners in tennis history. He can do that better now. His return of his opponent’s second serve landed on the backhand wing with 47 percent of the points in 2023, compared to 39 percent in 2015, putting him in a much better position to attack.

After the points took shape last season, Djokovic took an attacking position 26 percent of the time, compared to 21 percent in 2015. Tennis geeks call a player’s ability to win points from an attacking position the “conversion rate.” Last season, Djokovic’s conversion rate was a clinical 72.1 percent, a top in the sport and 3.3 percentage points higher than his 68.8 percent conversion rate in 2015. The tour average is 66 percent.

How did he become so clinical? His forehand has gotten two miles per hour faster in the last eight years. That helps.

In addition, his attacking position was 60 centimeters further up the field than in 2015, meaning he is hitting the ball much earlier than before, suffocating opponents by stealing fractions of seconds from their recovery and preparation times.

The result of his increasing aggressiveness was a decrease in how much he had to defend, how many balls he had to chase and how many rabbits he had to pull out of his hats. Tennis nerds call this a player’s “steal score,” the percentage of points a player wins after being in a defensive position.

As exciting as it is to win back a point that seems lost, it is tiring and tough on a 36-year-old body. No one knows that better than Djokovic.

In 2015, Djokovic and Nadal jointly led the sport with a steal rate of 43.3 percent. That’s kind of crazy to think about: almost half the time their weaker opponents had Djokovic and Nadal on the run, those poor, overmatched souls still lost the point.

Last season, Djokovic’s steal rating was a much less prodigious 36.4 percent, still above the tour average of 34 percent and a lot kinder to those 36-year-old knees. In other words, he’s still better than most at making magic happen when necessary, but he’s become so much more efficient that he wins without expending as much energy.

It’s a logical strategy for any growing parent. Federer has become more aggressive, and Nadal has tried to do the same, coming to the net to score points when opportunities present themselves. But Djokovic has been more successful than both, winning many of the sport’s biggest titles at this point in his career.

For opponents, there is really only one solution: attack before he attacks, let him run and force him to play more defensively, as he did during his previous tennis life.

Easier said than done of course.

The winning formula has Djokovic setting big goals for 2024. “It’s no secret that I want to break more records and make more history,” he said. “That is something that continues to motivate me.”

He wants more Grand Slam titles, an Olympic medal, which has somehow eluded him, a Davis Cup with Serbia. He enjoys beating the young players: players who are two tennis generations removed from him and who cannot understand how he has refused to give up.

Djokovic suffered a wrist injury during the United Cup. But anyone assuming he is holding him back should remember that he won the Australian Open last year with a seriously injured hamstring that Ivanisevic said most other players would have retired from and, in 2021, with an abdominal muscle tear.

“I know what I need to do to keep my body and mind in the optimal state so that I have the opportunity to break records and progress,” Djokovic said.

He still loves tennis, but winning remains the main motivation, especially when he is on the road for weeks and away from his family.

“That mentality won’t change until 2024 or any subsequent year I play,” he said.

How he actually plays the game may be another, ever-evolving story.

Just ask Ivanisevic.

(Top photo: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images)