He beat our Pat and stripped on his way to the sea. What makes Ivanisevic a great coach?

Novak Djokovic and Goran Ivanisevic first crossed alleys at Niki Pilic’s famed academy in Oberschleissheim, outside Munich. It was the middle of 2001. Ivanisevic was not quite 30, but his colourful career was quickly running down.

Once No.2 in the world, now No.125, he had lost in the first round of qualifying at the Australian Open and missed the French altogether. But Wimbledon, where he had lost three finals, had indulged him with a wildcard, an acknowledgement that he had long been a drawcard. He was preparing himself at Pilic’s academy.

Ivanisevic was the first wildcard to win Wimbledon. Now he is part of Team Djokovic.Credit: AP

Djokovic was 14, but rising as fast as he was growing. Pilic, a one-time French Open finalist, paired him with Djokovic as a ball boy. Ivanisevic remembers him then.

“Right away, you could see a boy with a whole different mindset compared to the rest of his colleagues,” Ivanisevic said in 2020. “He was a beast even back then, and I knew that he was going to become a world-class player. Sir Niko told me, ‘This kid is going to be No.1 in the world’. I could see it.”

Unannounced, Ivanisevic got on a roll at that Wimbledon, gathering fans, favour and fervour as he went. In a rain-affected semi-final, he outlasted British favourite Tim Henman over three days. The final was postponed to the Monday, which meant that for once there were plenty of tickets for the hoi polloi, and it became known as the “people’s final”.

Ivanisevic’s opponent was Pat Rafter, presenting Australia with a Sophie’s choice between Rafter, who was universally loved, and Ivanisevic, who with his heart-on-sleeve theatrics had endeared himself Down Under over the years. In the event, Ivanisevic prevailed narrowly, 9-7 in the fifth, so becoming the first wildcard to win Wimbledon. More than 100,000 jammed the streets of Split for his homecoming and Ivanisevic celebrated by taking off his clothes and jumping into the sea.

That was the mercurial, but always engaging Ivanisevic for you. He once said that on a given day, he might beat a top-10 player or lose to his mother. One day at Brighton, he defaulted when he smashed all three racquets and had none left to complete the match.

He could throw a tantrum with the best of them, but with a functioning racquet he could play, too, well enough to be inducted into the game’s hall of fame three years ago. Remind you of anyone? To this day, Djokovic and Ivanisevic joke about the temperamental echoes in their partnership.

In retirement, Ivanisevic became a coach, guiding countryman Marin Cilic to his only major title and working with Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic (who he said should have hired a psychologist, not a coach). Ivanisevic as coach surprised Christopher Clarey, for 30 years a keen observer of tennis as The New York Times roundsman.

“To be 100 per cent honest, when I first followed Goran as a player in the ’90s, at Wimbledon, say, he was like chasing a bird around on the grass on centre court,” Clarey said. “He always seemed quite flighty, pun intended. He wasn’t someone who necessarily was going to be a great coach.”

Ivanisevic’s homecoming after beating Pat Rafter to win Wimbledon was celebrated by a crowd of 100,000 in Split.Credit: Reuters

But Clarey said he had overlooked something. “Goran was always funny. He was quick and witty and could make us laugh in his second or third language,” Clarey said. “That’s a sign of a certain type of intelligence.” Indeed, Ivanisevic’s humour was as deadpan as his voice was flat and low; it made his press conferences as much compulsory viewing as his matches.

Ivanisevic said that as coach, he has learnt to subordinate his volatile playing persona. “On the court, people saw me as a savage or semi-savage, but I’m quite different off the court,” he said after the 2023 Australian Open final. “I’m quite calm. No one believed that I could become a good coach. You need to know how to bury the ego. You don’t matter any more. The player is important.”

Besides, he said, he was coaching the best player of all time, so it was not as if he could pull rank or assert moral superiority.

A strength of Ivanisevic’s game was his low, fast serve. He taught it to Cilic, who in 2014 romped to the US Open title, beating Roger Federer in straight sets in a semi-final and thrashing Kei Nishikori in the final. “Marin probably never served better than in the home stretch of that US Open,” Clarey said. “He was pretty much unplayable.”

All the while, Djokovic was emerging into his pomp and Ivanisevic was nursing an ambition to catch the updraft one day. “It would be as if Real Madrid asked you to be their coach,” he said in 2017. “It is the dream of any tennis coach.”

What is a tennis coach anyway? No two are alike. No two players are alike in what they need in a coach. Some players employ stars, some technicians, some family, some a combination. Rafael Nadal has three at a time, Nick Kyrgios none. Most have what they can afford. A small village trails Aryna Sabalenka around, for instance, but for others, there might be only a part-time hitting partner.

Paul Annacone coached Pete Sampras and Federer to major titles as well as working with Henman, Stan Wawrinka, Sloane Stephens and now Taylor Fritz.

“The biggest thing is good lines of communication,” Annacone said. “When am I the friend? When am I the disciplinarian? When am I the sports psychologist? Most good coaches figure that out. You have to know when to talk, and when to listen, and when to just turn away and give your player some space. But there’s no magic recipe.”

Clarey thinks regular change is good, like teachers at school. “The players at the highest level are so evolved,” he said. “All they need is a different voice sometimes to make a difference.”

When coaching Federer, Annacone was abetted by Swiss Davis Cup captain Severin Luthi, who was a low-key constant in the superstar’s career. Annacone said it was an ideal combination. He thinks the same model has worked for Djokovic, who had Slovakian Marian Vajda in his corner for the best part of 16 years until two years ago, while higher-profile others rotated through adjacent chairs. On the eve of Wimbledon in 2019, Ivanisevic got his Real Madrid gig.

For a short time, he overlapped with Craig O’Shannessy, an Australian coach who uses sophisticated data analysis. It didn’t really work.

“Goran’s just old school. Goran doesn’t get numbers. He’s just not wired that way,” said O’Shannessy in a 2020 podcast. “As a focal point on that team, it’s Goran’s call what happens. Since he doesn’t understand the analytics as much, he doesn’t really trust it. He didn’t want it any more. That’s fine. He’s the boss of the team. So I moved on.” There were no hard feelings.

Djokovic celebrates, with Ivanisevic to the right, after winning his 10th Australian Open.Credit: Getty Images

Interviewed on the ATP website later that year, Ivanisevic said: “They’d talk for three hours about where that guy just served three years ago. Who cares? Too much information; in the end, the players forget what they need to do. Novak needs to focus on his game.

“I have nothing against Craig, and statistics are important. Marian and I go over it, and then we present the filtered information to Novak. That is enough.”

In 2022, Vajda stood back, amicably; Djokovic was cutting back his schedule to concentrate on the majors and so was slimming down his entourage. That left Ivanisevic in charge.

Well, not as such. Another quirk of the tennis player-coach dynamic is that notionally, the employee tells the employer what to do. Between Ivanisevic and Djokovic, it’s not quite so.

Ivanisevic (front, centre) in Djokovic’s box during the 2023 Australian Open final.Credit: Getty Images

“Who am I to get angry with him? He is the best player in the history of tennis,” Ivanisevic said earlier this year. “Sometimes I can only get mad at him when he yells at us for no reason. [Even] when he loses a match, he always gives his best and tries his best. But it’s not easy to deal with him when he’s losing.”

When Djokovic lost a match at the ATP Finals in November, he withdrew into himself. Take it away, Goran. “He chained us with handcuffs for three days. He was torturing us, pulling out our fingernails,” Ivanisevic said. “I am an old man and I need to be careful with my heart. Sometimes it’s very complicated.” This was the sort of colourful flourish that distinguished his tennis, too.

Sometimes, this inherent tension spills into public view on court, with an animated and voluble flow between player and box. It did, for instance, during last year’s Australian Open. Ivanisevic said he understood it as a necessary release. “I was tennis player. I was also a bit crazy, so I understand how he feels. I understand emotions,” he said on AO TV.

Rejoined Djokovic: “I have to explain to people who have not been in this situation what you go through. I was not comfortable. I was looking for some help, advice, guidance. They tolerate a lot of things that I do to them. I’m really grateful.”

In a recent 60 Minutes interview in the US, Djokovic elaborated. “Sometimes, it’s my frustration, maybe not particularly with the box, but just with myself,” he said. “So they [his box] unfortunately sometimes have to accept some of my tantrums on court, even though it’s not their fault.”

Underlying all is Djokovic’s ceaseless and never diminishing pursuit of perfection. This is a man, after all, who chooses to holiday in a Greek monastery. Ivanisevic understands this even as it sometimes rebounds on him. “It’s very tough to improve him,” Ivanisevic said in November. “But he wants to improve. That’s the good thing and bad thing for me as a coach and the rest of his team.”

Annacone notes that not only has Djokovic sustained his motivation, in Ivanisevic’s time he has become a more complete player – not to mention more replete. The record bears this out; twice he has been within one match of completing the almost mythical grand slam.

“The amazing thing about Novak is that no matter what he’s done, he’s never stopped trying to get better,” Annacone said. “That’s a lot to do with the folks around him, but it’s also his own inner drive.

“If you watch him volley now compared to three or four years ago, it’s amazing. Early in his career, his serve was a liability, his forehand was a liability. Look now. The guy’s just incredible. I think Goran’s done a lot to help navigate that. But it all stems from the fact that Novak continues to want to get better.”

Ivanisevic has his own motivation. You might even call it referred unfinished business. He knows that at a certain point in a long and decorated career, only gold glitters. “Sometimes finals is not good enough,” he once said. “Nobody’s going to remember how many finals you played. They’re going to remember how many titles you have.”

He won just one major, arguably underachieving. But the one was memorable.

Watch all the Australian Open action live on Nine, 9Gem, 9Now and Stan Sport from Sunday, January 14.

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