The best tennis player in the world spoke frankly about the state of his sport in Serbia.
Novak Djokovic he defeated the Frenchman Luca Van Asch at the Serbian Open in Banja Luka after two hours and 40 minutes of drama, and after that he spoke more openly than before about the fact that he is worried about the future of Serbian tennis. “France produces great players and I hope it will become a tradition with Serbia. We can’t just focus on this generation. Serbia doesn’t have a great tradition, except for Boba and Monika, we didn’t have male and female top tennis players until the golden generation. The last 20 years have been golden era and our responsibility is to set good platforms for future generations. We have to deal with it, because I don’t like the state of Serbian tennis at all, and deal with it collectively,” said Novak.
With the exception of Luka Van Asch, his compatriots Gregoire Barrer, Richard Gasquet, Hugo Gaston, Gael Monfils received a wild card… Van Asch caused big problems against Novak and was recognized by Djokovic. “Congratulations for a good game, he didn’t fall in the game, especially he led for a set and a half, he didn’t miss, and I had mistakes that resulted in the loss of the set. It’s twice as slow as the training court, I didn’t hit well, it took me time to find rhythm. Here are the slowest conditions I’ve played in. I know it was raining and that had an effect. You could tell by the length of the matches here, because it’s hard to make winners. We have to work a lot physically to win points.”
What future willSerbian Open“? In previous years, that tournament was held in Belgrade as the “Serbia Open”, and what will happen in the following seasons? This is how Novak explained: “The license is returned to the owner in Romania, and we will try to find a way for Serbia and Banjaluka in the future they have a tournament. It doesn’t depend on us, we have the desire, because the ‘Serbia Open’ was really successful, this looks great for now, the people are eager for tennis and have a tennis culture. The audience is phenomenal, they follow a lot and know how to behave, and I hope that the ratings from the World Tennis Federation will be good, because it also depends on that. The basis has been made, to focus on this until now”.