The irony of Serbia’s dominant victory over Great Britain on Thursday is that Novak Djokovic, the world’s best player, flirted with British citizenship as a teenager.
Djokovic’s brief chat with the Lawn Tennis Association came immediately after he previewed this week’s action by crushing Britain’s Davis Cup hopes.
In the autumn of 2006, Serbia and Montenegro (the former Yugoslav states were then a team) achieved a 3-2 victory at the Braehead Arena in Glasgow. Djokovic won both his singles matches, first defeating Arvind Parmar and then Greg Rusedski.
And here’s another irony: Rusedski had already provided a living example of how the transfer could work. Rusedski was initially met with ridicule and skepticism when he transferred his citizenship from Canada in 1995. But the fuss soon faded when he reached the 1997 US Open final.
Consider, too, the way Rusedski’s often icy rivalry with Tim Henman created its own dramatic narrative, claiming thousands of columns and broadcast hours. In 2006, Djokovic was 19 – and so was the fast-rising Andy Murray, born just a week earlier in 1987. The prospect of a Henman-Rusedski Mark II must have warmed the hearts of marketers.
But what about the obvious and essential problem? Djokovic was not British. Not even a little bit. While Rusedski’s mother came from Dewsbury in Yorkshire.
The short answer is that such details could easily have been overlooked. At the time, International Tennis Federation rules required only three years of residency for a transfer of nationality in the Davis Cup. Plenty of lesser players have become British for pragmatic reasons, most notably Slovenian Aljaz Bedene (whose ranking peaked at number 43 in the world).
From Djokovic’s perspective, the motivation was simple: cash. As a five-year-old growing up in the mountain resort of Kopaonik, he was lucky enough to meet Jelena Gencic, a former national champion who had already turned Monica Seles into a world beater. But the financial crunch came when he was twelve and had to spar with other talented juniors.
In this less digital age, his parents Srdjan and Dijana must have worn out their Rolodex. They begged, borrowed and scraped together the costs for Niki Pilic’s academy near Munich. After such tensions, the prospect of a lavishly funded programme, based in the LTA’s brand new headquarters in Roehampton, would have seemed very attractive.
To fill in some of the details, the Telegraph spoke to Roger Draper, who was then just weeks into his seven-year spell as LTA chief executive – and whose son Jack played Thursday’s first match.
“It started at an official dinner during the Davis Cup match,” Draper recalls. “Stuart Smith, then president of the LTA, came to me and said, ‘I have just been contacted by a representative of the Djokovic family. They have this child and they don’t feel like they’re getting the support and resources that they need. They are exploring other avenues. What kinds of things can you do?’
“A few weeks later we had dinner with Dijana and Srdjan at Stuart’s house in Kent. I said, ‘We can do what we do for all the other British players: provide a training venue and some financial support.’ They were just tennis parents trying to do the best for their kids. However, after that conversation I heard nothing more about it. The funny thing was that a security guard saw them coming through the doors of Queen’s Club, where the LTA was then located. He happened to be a Serb and he called a friend, who called another friend, and before we knew it it wasn’t top secret anymore.”
One possibility is that the Djokovic family used the LTA as accomplices in a broader strategy. This suggestion was later made by Serbia’s 2006 Davis Cup captain Nenad Zimonjic in an interview with Djokovic’s biographer Chris Bowers. As Zimonjic explained, “Maybe it was a way of saying to our country: ‘Listen, you have an incredible talent here, you should help it.'”
It’s also worth remembering that the Djokovic clan had two younger guys to think about. Both Marko and Djordje were considered excellent prospects at the time. A few hotheads even predicted that Djordje would eclipse Novak’s achievements, although none of the latecomers ultimately made a living from the tour.
“I remember driving around with Srdjan and Dijana one day at the end of 2006,” an LTA employee recalled at the time. “We looked at the NTC, which was under construction at the time, and I took them to Reed’s School [the specialist tennis facility attended by Henman], because that would have been the basis for the two younger boys. At the time, Srdjan was confident that he could replicate Novak’s success.
“They were polite, but I wouldn’t say they were cordial. They just wanted to know exactly what they would get out of the deal.”
Djokovic discussed the whole thing himself in a 2009 newspaper interview. “Great Britain offered me a lot of opportunities,” he said at the time, “and they needed someone because Andy was the only one, and still is. That had to be a disappointment for all the money they invested. But I didn’t need the money as much as I used to. I had started making some for myself, enough to pay for carriage travel, and I said, “Why on earth?” I am Serbian, I am proud to be Serbian – I didn’t want to ruin that just because another country had better conditions.”
Some may think that Djokovic has since taken revenge on British tennis. He was the immovable obstacle in Murray’s path for at least a decade, dominating their head-to-head record with 25 wins to 11. And Thursday’s straight sets victory over Cam Norrie means he is unbeaten in the Davis Cup battle between the two countries. .
In the aftermath of that match, Djokovic’s angry row with some rowdy British supporters could be taken as further evidence of resentment. But in all likelihood, we’re flattering ourselves if we think Djokovic has the LTA in mind. You suspect he’s barely thought about his flirtation in a decade (except when asked about it at press conferences). He is the ultimate tennis warrior and he just keeps winning.