Novak Djokovic snaps hilarious selfie with Marmalade Tik Tokers after a week long search

A pair of Adelaide men spent all week trying to track down the tennis champion and on Friday night they achieved the feat. See the video.

The dream to secure a ‘selfie’ with Novak Djokovic has come true for two determined Adelaide men after a citywide search for the elusive tennis superstar.

Jim and Joel, or Checkers as he likes to be known, began their quest to snap a shot with Djokovic last month, just days after he arrived in the city for the Adelaide International.

Filming videos and taking photos with sporting royalty has become a feature of the pair’s popular social media page, Marmalade, which has a cult following of more than 53,000 people on Tik Tok.

So when the 21-time grand slam champion arrived in the city, they were quick to start tracking his movements around Adelaide, which included visits to Henley Beach and popular CBD restaurant Africola.

But Checkers said each time they visited those locations, the former world number one was nowhere to be found.

Marmalade comedians Checkers and Jim finally get their selfie, with Novak Djokovic., Picture: Supplied

Marmalade comedians Checkers and Jim finally get their selfie, with Novak Djokovic., Picture: Supplied

“I’ll admit that we started to think we’d bitten off more than we could chew,” he said.

A trip to the tennis on Wednesday also proved unsuccessful with Checkers and Joel waiting courtside for Djokovic to finish training, only for the Serbian icon to leave the court quickly to get to his next engagement.

“It was funny because we were having a chat to security who were aware of us because of some of the stunts we’ve pulled at the cricket at Adelaide Oval,” he said.

“Even his private security had a chat to us and told us not to be a nuisance.”

But on Friday night, Checkers decided they would ramp up their efforts.

“We actually took a tent and our sign and planned to camp out the front of the player exit until he came out,” he said.

“But then we did a scope of the venue and actually found a spot from above where you could see the door the players enter and exit from.”

The pair waited at the spot for about 15 minutes and then all of a sudden Djokovic walked through.

“We yelled at him, he looked up at us and just laughed a bit. I don’t know if it was because he’d seen the sign or had heard about our campaign,” Checkers said.

Marmalade comedians Checkers and Jim finally get their selfie, with Novak Djokovic., Picture: Supplied

Marmalade comedians Checkers and Jim finally get their selfie, with Novak Djokovic., Picture: Supplied

Checkers told Djokovic to catch his phone and fortunately the Serbian legend had safe hands.

“We weren’t overly prepared for it happening that way, so I was just hoping my lifeproof phone case would pull through if anything went wrong,” he said.

“It’s easy to drop a phone down on someone’s head but the way he whisked the phone back up was a lot more impressive.”

After a tireless week, the boys had their photo.

“Look, it was a bit of a joke to start out with, but he’s one of the greatest tennis players of all-time and has over 11 million followers on Instagram, so it’s pretty amazing,” Checkers said.

“He was great about it, you can say what you like about him, but he’s given a lot of his time back to people while he’s been here and he’s been promoting Adelaide.”

Even Djokovic himself shared the Marmalade achievement on his own page.

“After that we’ve had all these messages from fan pages and Serbian fans.”