Novak Djokovic

Novak Djokovic is a Serbian player from Belgrade who learned the game at a mountain resort and trained through the NATO bombing of the city in 1999, practising in an abandoned pool between air raids. He turned professional at sixteen into a men's game already dominated by two others.

He became the most decorated man in the sport's history by outlasting them, on the back of return of serve, flexibility and a fitness regime he treats as a discipline in itself. No man has spent longer at the top of the rankings. The one prize that eluded him for two decades, Olympic singles gold, came in Paris in 2024, completing the career Golden Slam.

He reached the Australian Open final in 2026 and the Wimbledon semi-finals, then lost in the first round of the US Open, only the third time in his career he had gone out at that stage of a major. He remains one of the sport's most divisive figures, admired for the record and argued about for almost everything else.

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