Novak Djokovic called the tennis 'Yoko Ono' by Andy Roddick: "He is the one we didn't want, didn't need"

Former World No.1, Andy Roddick had super agent Max Eisenbud as his special guest this week on the Served podcast and he discussed Novak Djokovic also acting as a disruptor and almost as a 'Yoko Ono' type figure.

During the early 2000's, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were the benchmark of tennis and shared the majors together until 2007. But Djokovic then suddenly burst onto the scene and started a huge shift. The Serbian since then has won 24 Grand Slam titles and counting and began a shift towards a Big Three.

A Big Three that Roddick said wasn't wanted at the time due to the rivalry already being there between the pair and hence the parallel of Yoko Ono dating John Lennon and breaking up the Beatles. It was very much a new era that wasn't seen coming and for some fans wasn't heralded due to their love of the original two. But now Djokovic has all but usurped both of them with Nadal still around but seemingly on his way out of the sport. Other spoilers at the time including Andy Murray are on their way out, with Stan Wawrinka the only other player with no semblance of shutting down his career yet.

"I feel like Novak Djokovic is the guy who broke up The Beatles," Roddick said on his podcast. "He is like tennis' Yoko [Ono]. He is the one who we didn't want, didn't need. We had the rivalry, we had the lefty-righty. We had the contrasting styles."

"Then all of a sudden, this cyborg robot, but also someone who plays with a lot of emotion, comes in and is like, 'I'm not buying into the hype. I am complete. You can't go through me, you can't go around me. I'm gonna take the punches from these guys'. It was weird. It was almost like the kind of the mainstream not tennis-centric fan was kinda mad at him for it," the former US Open champion added.