Novak Djokovic's achievements overshadowed in debate over tennis' GOAT

In the ever contentious debate over the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) label among the Big Three of the tennis world, Novak Djokovic, the youngest of them, tends to get short shrift. Is it his clinical, high-percentage brand of tennis that works against him? Sure, when compared with Roger Federer’s fluent grace, including that incomparable single-handed backhand, or the exciting power tennis that Rafael Nadal brought to the game, with those vicious top spins and thundering overhead smashes.

 

Now 37 years, and as he prepares to take his 100th ATP tour title at the Brisbane International, the numbers for Djokovic don’t lie. He’s a GOAT, no doubt about it. With 24 Grand Slam titles, he leads his now-retired GOAT rivals by four and two, respectively, and he’s ahead on the head-to-head statistics too. With Federer, six years his senior, the win-loss record is 23-27; with Nadal, just one year older, the numbers are 31:29, though Nadal has won 11 of their 18 Grand Slam encounters. 

The unanswerable question, of course, is whether Djokovic is the GOAT. That’s a complex issue over which fans will forever bicker. GOAT-dom is a much more complex business than statistics can convey. Djokovic was the upstart who burst on the scene in 2003 winning the Australian Open, disturbing fans’ enjoyment of the unique Federer-Nadal rivalry, by then going on 11 consecutive majors. Nor was this victory, as many expected, a one-off. Performing almost under the radar, Djokovic continued to amass titles. From 2011 through to 2023, he won Grand Slam trophies every year bar 2017. In 2024, although he lacked a Grand Slam title, he clocked some new records, including becoming the oldest world number one of all time at 37 years and 18 days. Unlike Nadal, whose extraordinary court coverage and 14 French Open titles came despite injuries considered career-ending for lesser mortals, Djokovic retained an awesome level of fitness.    

Yet, as his former coach Boris Becker so notoriously said in commentary during the 2019 Wimbledon final between Djokovic and Federer, an enthralling five setter, “He doesn’t feel the love”. Why so? Partly perhaps because of variables that shouldn’t count in a sports person’s career. Where the part Swiss, part-South African Federer and the Spanish Nadal displayed an effortless charm off the court in their engagement with fans and the press, the Serbian Djokovic seemed to gloat over his victories. 

Sadly — and illogically — personality has emerged as a factor in the GOAT-dom stakes, and Djokovic didn’t help himself in this department. Not that he didn’t try hard, as the mercurial Australian tennis brat Nick Kyrgios shrewdly noted. The artificial post-match celebrations —“cringe-worthy”, Kyrgios called them — were one thing. Also contrived is his careful image curation as a man whose family had prevailed despite many struggles during the Yugoslav civil war. This may have been true but hardly unique. Hundreds of former Yugoslav footballers endured similar travails without talking too much about them. At one post-match interview, he darkly attributed his fighting spirit to “roaming with wolves” in the Serbian countryside. When the audience burst out laughing assuming it was a joke, he snapped, “I’m not joking, guys, it’s true!” 

His evangelical endorsement of veganism didn’t help his cause, not least because he declined to share the formula of his specialised sports drinks. The Covid years did not help him either. His attempt to host a charity tennis tournament to raise money for Covid victims in June 2020 turned out to be a super-spreader event after a bunch of tennis players caught the virus. Then came his famous exit from the US Open of that year, a bad-tempered performance in general that earned him disqualification after a ball he viciously hit away after losing a point caught a linesman on the throat. 

Who knows, he may well have reached 100 ATP titles mark and notched up more Grand Slam wins earlier had it not been for his anti-vaxxer stance, including the Australian Open (he was deported ahead of the 2022 tournament), which he has won a record 10 times. Though he may trail in the popularity stakes, knowledgeable fans will always remember him as the player with the best return-of-serves in the game, no small feat in high-level tennis, and with one of the most consistent double-handed backhands. Those attributes alone make Novak Djokovic great.