50 facts about Serbian professional tennis player Novak Djokovic

Novak Djokovic is considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Learn 50 facts about Djokovic.

1. Novak Djokovic is a Serbian professional tennis player.

2. Novak Djokovic is considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

3. Novak Djokovic is coached by former German tennis player and Wimbledon champion Boris Becker.

4. Novak Djokovic has won nine Major singles titles and has held the No. 1 spot in the ATP rankings for a total of 159 weeks.

5. By winning three Grand Slam titles in 2011, Djokovic became the sixth male player to win three Grand Slams in a calendar year.

6. By reaching the 2012 French Open final, he became the ninth player in the Open Era to reach the final of all four Grand Slam singles tournaments and the fifth to do so consecutively.

7. Amongst other titles, he won the ATP World Tour Finals in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2014 and was on the Serbian team which won the 2010 Davis Cup.

8. Novak Djokovic also won the Bronze medal in men's singles at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

9. Novak Djokovic has won 24 Masters 1000 series titles, breaking a single-season record with five titles in 2011. This places him second on the list of Masters 1000 winners since its inception in 1990.

10. Novak Djokovic holds several men's Open Era records: becoming the youngest player to have reached the semifinals of all four Grand Slam tournaments both separately and consecutively; the first player to win three consecutive men's Australian Open titles, as well as the only player to win 5 Australian Open titles overall; and playing the longest Grand Slam men's singles final in history (5 hours 53 minutes).

11. Djokovic's ATP World Tour records include winning 31 consecutive ATP World Tour Masters 1000 series matches, playing in the finals at all nine ATP Masters 1000 tournaments (shared with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal), and being the only player to win eight of the nine events at least once.

12. Novak Djokovic holds the best match winning rate at (83.33%) on hard courts and he is the only player in the Open Era to win the first three masters in a year (2015: Indian Wells, Miami Open and Monte Carlo).

13. Novak Djokovic is the first Serbian player to win multiple Grand Slams and the first Serbian player to rank No. 1 for more than 100 weeks.

14. Novak Djokovic is the first male player representing Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles title.

15. Novak Djokovic has won numerous awards, including the 2012 and 2015 Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year and the 2012, 2013 and 2015 Best Male Tennis Player ESPY Award.

16. Novak Djokovic has won the ATP World Tour Player of the Year three times - in 2011, 2012 and 2014, and the ITF World Champion award four times consecutively, from 2011 to 2014.

17. Novak Djokovic is a recipient of the Order of St. Sava and the Order of Karađorđe's Star.

18. Novak Djokovic was born on 22 May 1987 in Belgrade, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to parents Srđan and Dijana (née Žagar).

19. His two younger brothers, Marko and Đorđe, are also tennis players with professional aspirations.

20. Residing in Monte Carlo, Djokovic was coached by former Slovak tennis player Marián Vajda from 2006 until Boris Becker took over the role of Head Coach in December 2013.

21. Similar to Roger Federer, Djokovic is a self-described fan of languages, speaking Serbian, English, French, German and Italian.

22. Novak Djokovic met his future wife, Jelena Ristić, in high school, and began dating her in 2005.

23. The two became engaged in September 2013 and on 10 July 2014 the couple got married on Sveti Stefan in Montenegro, while a church wedding was held in the same place, on 12 July 2014, in the Church of Saint Stephen which belongs to Praskvica Monastery.

24. On 24 April 2014, Djokovic announced that he and Ristić were expecting their first child.

25. His son Stefan was born on 21 October 2014.

26. Novak Djokovic began playing tennis at the age of four.

27. Novak Djokovic In the summer of 1993, the six-year-old was spotted by Yugoslav tennis player Jelena Genčić at Mount Kopaonik, where Djokovic's parents ran a fast-food parlour.

28. Genčić worked with young Djokovic over the following six years before realizing that, due to his rapid development, going abroad in search of increased level of competition was the best option for his future. To that end, she contacted Nikola Pilić and in September 1999 the 12-year-old moved to the Pilić tennis academy in Oberschleißheim, Germany, spending four years there.

29. At the age of 14, he began his international career, winning European championships in singles, doubles, and team competition.

30. Novak Djokovic is known for his often humorous off-court impersonations of his fellow players, many of whom are his friends. This became evident to the tennis world after his 2007 US Open quarterfinal win over Carlos Moyá, where he entertained the audience with impersonations of Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova. His impersonations have also become very popular on YouTube.

31. Novak Djokovic also did an impression of John McEnroe after his fourth round match victory at the 2009 US Open, before playing a brief game with McEnroe, much to the delight of the audience.

32. Novak Djokovic is a member of the "Champions for Peace" club, a group of famous elite athletes committed to serving peace in the world through sport, created by Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organization.

33. Djokovic adheres to Eastern Orthodoxy in the Serbian Orthodox Church.

34. On 28 April 2011, Patriarch Irinej of Serbia awarded Djokovic the Order of St. Sava I class, the highest decoration of the Serbian Orthodox Church, because he demonstrated love for the church, and because he provided assistance to the Serbian people, churches and monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo.

35. Novak Djokovic is a keen fan of Serbian football club Red Star Belgrade, Italian club A.C. Milan and Portuguese club S.L. Benfica.

36. Novak Djokovic is good friends with fellow Serbian tennis player Ana Ivanovic, whom he has known since the two were children growing up in Serbia, through Djokovic's uncle and Ivanovic's father.

37. Novak Djokovic captured a record-breaking five ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles, and set a new record for the most prize money won in a single season on the ATP World Tour ($12 million).

38. Pete Sampras declared Djokovic's 2011 season as the best he has ever seen in his lifetime, calling it "one of the best achievements in all of sports."

39. Boris Becker called Djokovic's season "one of the very best years in tennis of all time," adding that it "may not be the best statistically, but he's beaten Federer, he's beaten Nadal, he's beaten everybody that came around to challenge him in the biggest tournaments in the world."

40. Novak Djokovic endorses Serbian telecommunications company Telekom Srbija and German nutritional supplement brand FitLine.

41. At the end of 2009, Djokovic signed a 10-year deal with the Italian clothing company Sergio Tacchini after Adidas refused to extend his clothing contract (choosing instead to sign Andy Murray).

42. Novak Djokovic did television commercial spots and print ads for supermarket chain Idea, the Serbian arm of Croatian supermarket retailer Konzum as well as for rival Serbian supermarket chain DIS Trgovina.

43. In August 2011, Djokovic became the brand ambassador of Swiss watch manufacturer Audemars Piguet.

44. Owing to his extroverted personality, fluency in several languages, and willingness to go along with comedic concepts, Djokovic became a fixture on entertainment-based TV talk shows around the globe immediately upon achieving a measure of prominence via results on the tennis court.

45. In May 2008, he was a special guest during the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Belgrade that year. He threw a big tennis ball into the crowd, announcing the start of the voting and together with one of the show's co-presenters, Željko Joksimović, Djokovic sang a song about Belgrade.

46. Novak Djokovic is one of only four players (besides David Nalbandian, Andy Murray, and Rafael Nadal) to beat Roger Federer three times in one calendar year, and one of only two players (Juan Martin Del Potro being the other) to beat both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in a Grand Slam in consecutive matches. He is the only player who can claim to have beaten both Federer and Nadal in the same tournament on 3 different occasions (Montreal 2007, Indian Wells 2011, US Open 2011).

47. Novak Djokovic is also the youngest player in the Open Era to defeat the top three players in succession and he achieved this when he defeated world number three Andy Roddick, world number two Nadal, and World number one Federer in the 2007 Rogers Cup.

48. Novak Djokovic is one of only two players to have defeated Federer at the semifinal stage or later on more than one occasion in Grand Slam tournaments, and also at consecutive tournaments (the other being Nadal).

49. His five Masters titles in 2011 are a season record, tied with Nadal in 2013.

50. He was voted the 19th most influential man on AskMen.com's Top 49 Most Influential Men of 2011.

Source: Wikipedia.org