Mountain boy's journey leads to summit of tennis world

Before flying home to Serbia for the party of all parties on Monday, a nation's hero, Novak Djokovic, the new Wimbledon champion and tennis's new world No 1, found a brief moment while being feted at the All England Club to reflect with joy on his sporting destiny.

He thought back to the happy chance that, as a 4-year-old kid living in the heart of the Dinaric Alps, the Yugoslav state-owned company that was then developing the ski resort of Kopaonik should decide to build three tennis courts on the other side of the carpark from where his parents, Dijana and Srdjan, ran the family creperie.

"God knows if I would have started tennis at all if those three tennis courts hadn't been up there," he laughed, still sounding as if he could not quite credit how two dreams of a lifetime, conquering Wimbledon and the tennis world, could be realised in one afternoon with his Centre Court triumph over defending champion Rafael Nadal.

"Because nobody in my family ever touched a tennis racket before me, so there was no tradition whatsoever. I would have become a skier or football player or a regular student. But that is destiny in life. When something is meant for you, it is meant for you."

Perhaps, then, it was meant for this 24-year-old to be playing such an iconic role in his young country's life that Vecernje novosti, a newspaper in Belgrade, hailed Djokovic, amid ecstatic celebrations in the city, as "a balm for all our wounds".

Djokovic, this proudest of Serbs, understands the symbolic power back home of his triumphant journey as a kid from the mountains in a war-torn nation who ends up scaling one of sport's most arduous peaks to become a global figure. "What he has achieved is equivalent to conquering Mt Everest, because you must ask yourselves how many millions of people play tennis and dream of becoming the best in the world," as his old mentor, Niki Pilic, put it.

Something about tennis compelled Djokovic from the start. He remembers watching Wimbledon as a kid and wanting to be like Pete Sampras. Jelena Gencic, Monica Seles's mentor, was the first to realise that little Novak might be a rare find when she arrived in Kopaonik to take a summer clinic.

"I shall never forget the day when this boy came with a bag neatly packed, as if for professional training," says Gencic. "I asked him who packed it for him and he replied indignantly he did it himself. When I asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, without hesitation he gave me the same answer that Monica Seles had: 'Number one player in the world!"'

And now he has made it, this eccentric, compelling figure feels he owes much to Gencic, who was prescient enough to tell the boy's parents they had a "golden child" on their hands, as well as to Pilic, the former Croatian star whose academy in Germany Djokovic was sent to as a 12-year-old.

Both mentors remember the same quality in Djokovic: a raging competitiveness that has been demonstrated to be every bit as ferocious as even the great Nadal's. "I soon realised after a short spell playing against him that he had this incredible will," recalled Pilic recently. "He ... also had what it takes in the places that no coach can really reach: into the heart and into the head."

Where did that bloody-minded, utterly determined spirit emanate from? Once again yesterday, Djokovic reflected on how he had to negotiate some serious "ups and downs in life to become a champion".

The downs included a spell in spring 1999 when Djokovic, his parents and two brothers, Marko and Djordje, were living in a small apartment in Belgrade as Nato jets were targeting the Serbian capital.

He and Ana Ivanovic, who along with Jelena Jankovic remarkably put Serbian tennis on the map after the Balkan conflicts, would sometimes have to disappear into a bomb shelter when their practice in an empty swimming pool, which had been turned into a makeshift tennis court, was alarmingly interrupted. "All of us who went through that came out with their spirit stronger," he once said. "And now we appreciate the value of life. We know how it feels to be living in 60 square metres being bombed."

It also taught him a fierce patriotism. When, in the mid-90s, there were serious discussions about whether he might switch his tennis allegiance to Britain because there were so few opportunities for support from his impoverished tennis association and the Lawn Tennis Association were offering financial inducements, Djokovic made the final decision.

At 19, already in the world top 40, he was constantly asked about the possible switch and was so fed up at the pressure being applied from all sides that he even blurted out at one conference: "I just don't want to talk or think about it any more."

When he did though, he could see only one course. "I said to myself 'I am Serbian, I am proud of being a Serbian'. If I had played for Britain, deep inside, I would never have felt I belonged."

- Telegraph Group Limited