“My upbringing was probably different than most of the other players from my generation,” Novak Djokovic once said. We are accustomed to seeing a skilled athlete in sports as the final product of the immense struggle, and Djokovic is a bright example. But we often miss the tons of hard work and moments of vulnerability that shape a champion. The 24-time Grand Slam champion is now gearing up to earn his first Olympic gold medal. However, once in his early years, he was not sure if he could play another match in tennis. Fortunately, his parents came to his rescue!

“Going back to the 1990s, when I was four, five years old…we had a couple of wars…Serbia had embargo,” Djokovic confessed in an interview last year. It was just the beginning of his family’s financial struggle. Building on the same idea, the author of ‘Searching for Novak, ‘biographer Mark Hodgkinson, recently told Tennis Majors, “They didn’t have a huge amount of money to pay for his efforts, his tennis coaching, and for him to travel to the tournaments. It was difficult for sponsors. So international companies were probably reluctant to spend money on a Serbian athlete.” As a result, Djokovic had to miss some junior tournaments while his country tried to overcome the “adversity,” and the “challenging times,”of the war.

However, his father, Srdjan Djokovic, who was a professional skier and instructor, was well aware of the hardships that an athlete has to go through to achieve success. Besides, his mother, Dijana Djokovic, also didn’t lose hope. The couple who owned and worked at a fast-food joint in Serbia held their heads high, keeping faith in their son’s talent and their fate. Hodgkinson rightly pointed out the “hard” and “extraordinary,” journey that Djokovic went through during the time that ultimately made his ‘World No. 1 title’ more deserving.

Furthermore, “He went through it and his family went through so much. And I think there were moments when, you know, his family thought, can we carry on? And, you know, they had to on a couple of occasions, his dad had to borrow money from loan sharks and they had some very, very, very difficult moments.” The 37-year-old player himself once admitted how his parents helped him pursue his dreams in tennis (which he defines as “hopefully winning Wimbledon and being number one in the world”).

Despite the financial strain, Srdjan and Dijana remained resolute in their support of their son and sent a six-year-old Djokovic to Teniski Klub Partizan tennis club to practice the sport more diligently. It was a place close to Mount Kopaonik, near his parents’ fast-food restaurant. There, he met Jelena Gencic, who identified his talent and trained the now seven-time Wimbledon champion for six years!

As he moved forward in his career, and turned pro in 2023, all these memories became a thing of the past for Djokovic, whose net worth is now $250 million. But even now, when he looks back to those days, he is filled with fear!

Novak Djokovic recalls his hardships that he turned into a source of “motivation”

Djokovic’s parents’ “lost everything,” during that war, even their fast-food place. While the burden of debt hung precariously over the family, Djokovic continued to refine his tennis skills, ultimately finding a place in the Pilic tennis academy. His father showed him a “ten-mark note,” of all his belongings. Speaking about this, Djokovic once said, “My father did it to make me understand that I had a responsibility.“

And it worked like magic for the Serbinator, who found an added layer of motivation in the distressing times. “For me, it was like a game, but for my parents it was a terrible stress: fear, the queue for bread, the hour of electricity a day in which my mother had to cook as much as possible. That war was an additional motivation. Half the world was against us, our country certainly didn’t have a good image and I wanted to demonstrate to the world that there were also good Serbs,” the three-time French Open winner said.

The Djokovic family’s story serves as a poignant reminder that success is not solely the result of individual effort, but also of the collective sacrifices made by those who believe in us.