Wimbledon 2011: Novak Djokovic's recipe for success
Page last updated at
16:12 GMT, Sunday, 3 July 2011 17:12 UK
By David Ornstein
BBC Sport at Wimbledon
Wimbledon Championships
Venue: All England Club, London Date: 20 June-3 July Coverage: Live on BBC One, Two, 3D, HD, Red Button, online (UK only), Radio 5 live, 5 live sports extra; live text commentary from 0900 BST on BBC Sport website (#bbctennis); watch again on iPlayer
Djokovic too good for spirited Tsonga (UK only)
Novak Djokovic's progress to the Wimbledon final means he will become the new world number one when the next ATP rankings are released on Monday.
The 24-year-old's rise to the summit of men's tennis owes much to an incredible 43-match unbeaten streak, which spanned six months, seven tournaments and started in December last year.
It came to an end with defeat by Roger Federer at the French Open, but marked a remarkable turnaround for a player who struggled badly for much of 2010 - winning only two of 19 tournaments all season.
Djokovic's SW19 run has extended his 2011 win-loss record to 48-1 after his four-set victory over Rafael Nadal in Sunday's showpiece.
But what sparked the improvement and why is he so much better in 2011? BBC Sport spoke to Marian Vajda, a former world number 34 and the Serbian's coach since 2006.
HOW DO YOU REFLECT ON NOVAK'S WINNING SEQUENCE?
"Special, wonderful, amazing - there aren't enough superlatives to describe how this year has been for him, and for us as his team. It shows we're doing a good job and we should celebrate and admire what has happened. Since I started working with him in 2006 this has been his goal.
Continue reading the main story
We found he had a gluten allergy and since he's cut that out of his diet, he is able to breathe better and take in more oxygen. His body is much healthier and this is the key
Marian Vajda
"He found a way to play the guys, learned how to beat them, how to prepare properly, how to handle the pressure. It's a process. Before, he had lapses, nerves, we could see he often couldn't handle the pressure. Physically he was not good. Now, he's 24 years old, much stronger and his talent is coming to the surface.
"Unfortunately the loss to Federer ended his unbeaten run and stopped him from becoming world number one, so that was bitter and took away some mental strength. But my role as his coach was to get him to try to forget this defeat and prepare as well as possible for Wimbledon."
WHAT HAS HE DONE DIFFERENTLY TO MAKE SUCH A DRASTIC STEP UP?
"There was a tough period in his tennis career when, in 2009, he decided he wanted to switch to working with two coaches. Todd Martin came in, changed a couple of techniques and his serve was not working well.
Vajda (second from right) has worked with Djokovic since 2006 "At the start of 2010, he was in serious trouble. He managed to win a few matches and stay in the world's top three, but he had no serve. He had to get back to his old routines. In men's tennis, the serve is the number one issue. We worked hard and about 12 months ago he started to improve, but he was still far away from where he is now.
"You can see his serve is much better and he is so confident now that he tends to win the most important points - break points, match points etc. At the start of this year he began winning matches in straight sets, dropping very few games and even in the giant battles against Nadal and Federer he was able to dominate, which rarely happened in 2010."
WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU PAID SPECIAL ATTENTION TO?
"Yes, we also worked hard on the physical side. Novak needed to improve his endurance. He was not able to stay on the court for a long time. He would manage five sets but it would take a lot of energy away from him for the next match. Now he's able to maintain that because he's far better technically and physically.
"We did a lot of running and a bike work but, in addition, he improved his health. We found he had a gluten allergy and since he's cut that out of his diet, he is able to breathe better and take in more oxygen. His body is much healthier and this is the key.
"But most of all, when you have a good serve you shorten games and hold easily - and that makes you stronger mentally. There are still areas to work on - he can improve his approach to and position at the net - but he's getting better and better."
HOW PLEASED WERE YOU WITH HIS PREPARATION FOR WIMBLEDON?
"Novak recovered really well from Paris. He went straight to Monte Carlo to be with his girlfriend Jelena for a couple of days - to have some time off, relax, do different things that would take his mind completely away from tennis.
Final dream 'comes true' for Djokovic (UK only)
"He went to the beach, did some swimming, saw his family and helped Jelena ahead of her graduation for an economics diploma on Sunday 12 June. Then we came over and practised at Aorangi for the first time on Monday 13 June.
"From the moment he stepped on to the grass he looked unbelievable. He played two practice sets against Richard Gasquet at an incredibly high level, as if Wimbledon was only two days away.
"In his only pre-Wimbledon warm-up match, against Gilles Simon, it was scary how good he was. He was relaxed and looking happier on grass than ever before. That made me feel pretty confident.
"The Federer defeat was bitter but champions like Novak realise that it's no shame to lose matches like that and unbeaten runs have to come to an end. Emotionally it stayed with him for a while, but he's experienced enough to get over it and regain his focus. To become world number one was something we were all focused on achieving. We prepared in a very professional way. He was ready.
WHY IS THIS TOURNAMENT SO SPECIAL TO NOVAK?
"It's a tradition. As a young kid, everyone watches Wimbledon. When I was a young kid I remember when we didn't have that much sport on TV, but we always had Wimbledon.
"You want to reach for that trophy, you want to see it high above your shoulders. This is the most exciting moment of your career. You work for this. It's the biggest tournament in the world. The history, the tradition, the champions. It's unique."
DID YOU FEEL HE ARRIVED AT SW19 UNDER LESS PRESSURE?
"Yes, and I was really pleased about that. The unbeaten run coming to an end released him. This was the tournament for Andy Murray, for Federer, for Rafael Nadal. Rafa was defending champion and had to defend all his ranking points from last year.
"Novak recovered well and came here in good condition, but we knew the relative lack of pressure could help him go far."
Musa Okwonga: The annual Wimbledon conundrum
The Independent
It's nerve; it's grit; it's the key ingredient that makes a true champion. As Andy Murray aims to break his Grand Slam duck, our writer gets to the root of what every winner needs
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Bottle. It's an odd word to describe the spirit that all athletes need when faced with unprecedented pressure, but it somehow seems to have stuck. There are several conflicting and convoluted suggestions as to its origin: the most recurrent is that "bottle" is derived from Cockney rhyming slang, "bottle and glass". If you've got plenty of "bottle and glass", so the slang goes, then that means that you've got plenty of "arse" when you're confronted with a career-defining test.
Bottle isn't like muscle: it's not visible to the naked eye. At first glance, most of the world's leading sportsmen and sportswomen look routinely impressive: fit, focused, intimidatingly intense. It's only when they're stepping towards that penalty spot or standing at that free-throw line that we get to peer beneath the veneer – to glance at the self-doubt that threatens to engulf them. And engulf them it does, time and again. Just look at Jana Novotna in the 1993 Wimbledon singles final, when she had a game point to go up 5-1 in the final set against Steffi Graf. Until that moment, we didn't know that Novotna would fold; maybe she didn't know, either. But a few games later, she was sobbing on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent as Graf took the title.
We don't have to look beyond our shores to find ample examples of those who've bottled it. In football, there's the familiar litany of losses to Germany; to name but one, the 1990 World Cup, where England's Stuart Pearce hit his spot-kick into the goalkeeper's midriff and Chris Waddle sliced his high over the crossbar. More recently, in golf, and the sight of Rory McIlroy's surrender at Augusta in the 2011 Masters was especially spectacular. Leading by four shots heading into the final round, holding a one-shot advantage as he moved into the back nine, he then dropped six shots in three holes, finishing 10 shots behind the leader Charl Schwartzel and recording an eight-over-par score of 80.
However, McIlroy's reaction to his meltdown said much about his character, and about the nature of bottle. "Well that wasn't the plan!" he tweeted. "But you have to lose before you can win. This day will make me stronger in the end." Once he had experienced terror, and rapidly understood that the only factor holding him back was his own trepidation; he had laid the foundation for his eventual success. It's no coincidence that in his next major tournament, the 2011 US Open, he triumphed by eight shots.
McIlroy's astonishing response to his collapse shows that we can be unnecessarily harsh when we dismiss an athlete as a "bottler", as someone who'll never hold it together when it counts. For his entire cricket career, the England batsman Graeme Hick was accused of being a "flat-track bully", someone who was proficient against domestic teams but who lacked courage at international level. Hick's batting average in all matches, including a highest score of 405 not out, was 52.23, as against a Test average of 31.32. The history books therefore record a verdict of frailty at the highest level. A more striking case still is Mark Ramprakash, regarded as one of the finest technicians ever to have played the game, but whose performances for England fell far short of those for his counties of Surrey and Middlesex. To date, Ramprakash has over 100 first-class centuries, one of only 25 men to achieve that feat: his batting average in first-class matches stands at 54.59, while his Test career ended with an average of 27.32.
The statistics suggest that, in the cases of Hick and Ramprakash, their bottle was irreparably broken. Both can rightly point to the promise that they showed at Test level, having excelled on foreign soil: Hick can refer to his innings of 178 against India's spinners in Bombay, and Ramprakash can hold up his 154 against West Indian quicks in Barbados. But ultimately, the words of Mike Atherton, written in 2008 in The Times about Ramprakash, ring true for both of them. "Sport is neither just nor unjust," he opined; "it simply reflects time and again an absolute truth. Ramprakash was tried and tested many times in international cricket and more often than not he was found wanting."
Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, in Choke: The Secret to Performing under Pressure says: "The more people practise under pressure, the less likely they will be to react negatively when the stress is on. This certainly seems to be true for professional golfers like Tiger Woods. To help Woods learn to block out distractions during critical times on the course, his father, Earl Woods, would drop golf bags, roll balls across Tiger's line of sight, and jingle change in his pocket. Getting Woods used to performing under stress helped him learn to focus and excel on the green."
This excellent practice served Woods well on his way to 14 major championships. But, as Beilock notes, there is no amount of rehearsal that can prepare you for pressure of unforeseen magnitude, such as Woods experienced after multiple revelations about his troubled private life.
If we know that bottle is so hard to have, then why are we so hard on those who don't have it? It's not as if we teach bottle in UK schools. You won't find classes in self-confidence in our curriculum or, as pop star Cher Lloyd has more recently dubbed it, "Swagger Jagger". No, we're too busy teaching humility to our athletes. As a nation, we are superb silver medallists. We smile politely on the podium and shake the winner's hand, when we should be snarling and tearing it off. And while bottle is not the same as arrogance, the two are closely related, both relying on a dogged belief in one's own ability, often in the face of reason.
Most British athletes who are regarded as bottlers are nothing of the sort. Instead, they are people who have risen far above their sporting station, who have gone beyond all reasonable expectation of their talent. Take Tim Henman, who went to six Grand Slam semi-finals, and who was at times a firm test for the all-time greatness of Pete Sampras. Take Andy Murray, who has finished as the runner-up in three Grand Slam finals, and who has the misfortune to be playing in the same era as the all-time greatness of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Neither of these men are failures. They're very, very, very good at tennis, and their only crime is to have fallen short of the milestone of sporting immortality.
If you're a world-class athlete, it's best not to care too much what the public thinks. If you're too dominant, the public can't relate to you and find you boring. If you come second too often, it despairs of you. Your victories must be conspicuously hard-won. There must be graft alongside the grace, bottle alongside the brilliance. We want you to sweat every bit as much as you Swagger Jagger.
If you can master all of that, then we'll truly take you to our hearts. And it can't look too pretty. Tiger Woods's most memorable major victory was not winning the 1997 Masters aged only 21, but the 2008 US Open, with only one good leg. Dame Kelly Holmes is loved not so much because she was a double Olympic gold medallist at 800m and 1500m, but because we saw her strive for years, and, in those final races, for every last inch of her success.
When athletes crumple to defeat in such public spheres, they may lose titles, but they win our affection. That's why, when Rory McIlroy stepped off the 18th green at Congressional, he was not just the 2011 US Open Champion. He was something vastly more: he was our champion.
Musa Okwonga is author of 'A Cultured Left Foot' and 'Will You Manage?'
Bottle isn't like muscle: it's not visible to the naked eye. At first glance, most of the world's leading sportsmen and sportswomen look routinely impressive: fit, focused, intimidatingly intense. It's only when they're stepping towards that penalty spot or standing at that free-throw line that we get to peer beneath the veneer – to glance at the self-doubt that threatens to engulf them. And engulf them it does, time and again. Just look at Jana Novotna in the 1993 Wimbledon singles final, when she had a game point to go up 5-1 in the final set against Steffi Graf. Until that moment, we didn't know that Novotna would fold; maybe she didn't know, either. But a few games later, she was sobbing on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent as Graf took the title.
We don't have to look beyond our shores to find ample examples of those who've bottled it. In football, there's the familiar litany of losses to Germany; to name but one, the 1990 World Cup, where England's Stuart Pearce hit his spot-kick into the goalkeeper's midriff and Chris Waddle sliced his high over the crossbar. More recently, in golf, and the sight of Rory McIlroy's surrender at Augusta in the 2011 Masters was especially spectacular. Leading by four shots heading into the final round, holding a one-shot advantage as he moved into the back nine, he then dropped six shots in three holes, finishing 10 shots behind the leader Charl Schwartzel and recording an eight-over-par score of 80.
However, McIlroy's reaction to his meltdown said much about his character, and about the nature of bottle. "Well that wasn't the plan!" he tweeted. "But you have to lose before you can win. This day will make me stronger in the end." Once he had experienced terror, and rapidly understood that the only factor holding him back was his own trepidation; he had laid the foundation for his eventual success. It's no coincidence that in his next major tournament, the 2011 US Open, he triumphed by eight shots.
McIlroy's astonishing response to his collapse shows that we can be unnecessarily harsh when we dismiss an athlete as a "bottler", as someone who'll never hold it together when it counts. For his entire cricket career, the England batsman Graeme Hick was accused of being a "flat-track bully", someone who was proficient against domestic teams but who lacked courage at international level. Hick's batting average in all matches, including a highest score of 405 not out, was 52.23, as against a Test average of 31.32. The history books therefore record a verdict of frailty at the highest level. A more striking case still is Mark Ramprakash, regarded as one of the finest technicians ever to have played the game, but whose performances for England fell far short of those for his counties of Surrey and Middlesex. To date, Ramprakash has over 100 first-class centuries, one of only 25 men to achieve that feat: his batting average in first-class matches stands at 54.59, while his Test career ended with an average of 27.32.
The statistics suggest that, in the cases of Hick and Ramprakash, their bottle was irreparably broken. Both can rightly point to the promise that they showed at Test level, having excelled on foreign soil: Hick can refer to his innings of 178 against India's spinners in Bombay, and Ramprakash can hold up his 154 against West Indian quicks in Barbados. But ultimately, the words of Mike Atherton, written in 2008 in The Times about Ramprakash, ring true for both of them. "Sport is neither just nor unjust," he opined; "it simply reflects time and again an absolute truth. Ramprakash was tried and tested many times in international cricket and more often than not he was found wanting."
Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, in Choke: The Secret to Performing under Pressure says: "The more people practise under pressure, the less likely they will be to react negatively when the stress is on. This certainly seems to be true for professional golfers like Tiger Woods. To help Woods learn to block out distractions during critical times on the course, his father, Earl Woods, would drop golf bags, roll balls across Tiger's line of sight, and jingle change in his pocket. Getting Woods used to performing under stress helped him learn to focus and excel on the green."
This excellent practice served Woods well on his way to 14 major championships. But, as Beilock notes, there is no amount of rehearsal that can prepare you for pressure of unforeseen magnitude, such as Woods experienced after multiple revelations about his troubled private life.
If we know that bottle is so hard to have, then why are we so hard on those who don't have it? It's not as if we teach bottle in UK schools. You won't find classes in self-confidence in our curriculum or, as pop star Cher Lloyd has more recently dubbed it, "Swagger Jagger". No, we're too busy teaching humility to our athletes. As a nation, we are superb silver medallists. We smile politely on the podium and shake the winner's hand, when we should be snarling and tearing it off. And while bottle is not the same as arrogance, the two are closely related, both relying on a dogged belief in one's own ability, often in the face of reason.
Most British athletes who are regarded as bottlers are nothing of the sort. Instead, they are people who have risen far above their sporting station, who have gone beyond all reasonable expectation of their talent. Take Tim Henman, who went to six Grand Slam semi-finals, and who was at times a firm test for the all-time greatness of Pete Sampras. Take Andy Murray, who has finished as the runner-up in three Grand Slam finals, and who has the misfortune to be playing in the same era as the all-time greatness of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Neither of these men are failures. They're very, very, very good at tennis, and their only crime is to have fallen short of the milestone of sporting immortality.
If you're a world-class athlete, it's best not to care too much what the public thinks. If you're too dominant, the public can't relate to you and find you boring. If you come second too often, it despairs of you. Your victories must be conspicuously hard-won. There must be graft alongside the grace, bottle alongside the brilliance. We want you to sweat every bit as much as you Swagger Jagger.
If you can master all of that, then we'll truly take you to our hearts. And it can't look too pretty. Tiger Woods's most memorable major victory was not winning the 1997 Masters aged only 21, but the 2008 US Open, with only one good leg. Dame Kelly Holmes is loved not so much because she was a double Olympic gold medallist at 800m and 1500m, but because we saw her strive for years, and, in those final races, for every last inch of her success.
When athletes crumple to defeat in such public spheres, they may lose titles, but they win our affection. That's why, when Rory McIlroy stepped off the 18th green at Congressional, he was not just the 2011 US Open Champion. He was something vastly more: he was our champion.
Musa Okwonga is author of 'A Cultured Left Foot' and 'Will You Manage?'