"He dove within himself and understood who he was": Alex Corretja believes Novak Djokovic Australian Open deportation lit a fire inside of him

Tennis pundit Alex Corretja believes that the tennis world is witnessing the best version of Serbia’s Novak Djokovic after the fiasco during the 2022 Australian Open.

The 36-year-old was deported from Australia after having issues with his COVID-19 vaccination status and was subsequently not allowed to participate in the first Grand Slam of the last year.

Corretja was recently quoted in a report where he suggested that the whole incident made Djokovic a completely different beast on the tennis court, something the world has never seen before.

Read also

"Ready for injury": What are the controversial new rule changes at the 2023 ATP Finals?

“I think what happened to him in Australia led him to a long introspection,” he said.“He dove within himself and understood who he was. And he just got deep inside his soul, his body, his mind. And from then on, he’s understood and dealt with everything better.

“He knows the people from outside better, what they think about him. Even the fellow tennis players, which ones were a little more on his side, which ones were not. So I think it’s like it woke up a beast inside him that he had, and he’s now controlling all his emotions much better than before.

“And I see now that even players or the crowd appreciate him even more than before because he’s authentic, he’s natural, he’s himself, and he’s not trying to go with a mass, saying things to make everyone happy.

Read also

Legendary duo Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova overtaken in career prize money already by Iga Swiatek

“He’s just gone with his principles. You might like them or you might not, but definitely he’s someone who is going to fight for whatever he feels he needs to go for. And he does that with the association that he’s creating for the players [PTPA], the way he’s acting on court.

“So I think we are seeing probably the best version of Novak Djokovic overall. Of course, maybe he’s a little bit different than five to ten years ago. But overall, I think we’ve seen probably the best performance of Novak in the whole history.”

ATP Tour

@atptour

·Follow

🎉 Happy Birthday to Novak Djokovic 🫶

Watch on Twitter

3.1K

Reply

Copy link

Read 96 replies