ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF DJOKER

How a fortuitous meeting with Novak Djokovic's mother and a sprint through Belgrade's tennis hotspots melted a Roger Federer diehard's reserve

- Bhavya Dore

When I told a friend I was going to Serbia, the first thing he texted me was: WHY?

“Why are you going to the land of our common enemy?”

For a minute I was perplexed, forgetting this was a Nadal fan talking to a Federer fan, about a shared tennis nemesis.

“Djoko!” he exclaimed. Novak Djokovic, the winner of 16 grand slams, had inflicted trauma on us both recently. My friend was reeling from the Australian Open decimation of Nadal, I was still suffering PTSD from Federer’s blown match points at Wimbledon. And despite those deep, psychic wounds, here I was, not only in the land of our purported common enemy, but voluntarily paying good money to eat at his parents’ restaurant in New Belgrade. A sprawling establishment with a small outdoor pool, a special room stacked with his trophies and a long menu, Novak, as the restaurant was called, took up the corner of a building in the planned city across the Danube river.

As a tennis nut, I respected Djokovic—his shapeshifting, weightless body, his canine tracking instincts, his determination in the face of hostile crowds—but you would not catch me watching Djokovic highlights set to Beethoven’s Ninth. And yet, Belgrade was essentially a city disguised as a Djokovic highlights reel. As a tennis fanatic it only behoved me to spend a week tracing his footsteps in the Serbian capital.

The first stop was the Danube-facing Teniski Centar Novak, a 14-court complex that Djokovic owned and practiced at, and which was open to the public to use. Groundsmen sprayed the deep orange courts wet, and a gimlet-eyed receptionist manned the counter. Photos of Djokovic clasping each of his grand slam trophies hung from the walls. “Nothing from Wimbledon 2019?” I asked, referring to his most recent, and (most trauma-inducing) victory. “Not yet,” she replied.