Ivan Ljubicic is Roger Federer‘s former coach, who worked with him in the final few years of his career, and he believes that Novak Djokovic lacks motivation at this stage of his career.
Djokovic and Ljubicic hail from the same corner of the world, and they know each other well. The Croatian was world number three when the Serbian player was breaking through on the ATP Tour, and he was replaced by Djokovic as the third player behind Federer and Rafael Nadal many years ago.
He’s been able to see upfront how much the success of both Nadal and Federer motivated Djokovic, but many years later, the Big Three isn’t complete, as only two of the players are competing.
Federer has been officially retired for a while, but he’s been technically away from the sport for four years now. Nadal is still competing, but he needs four hours to beat players he would likely completely outplay in an hour a decade ago, so clearly, things are different.
Ljubicic thinks it’s clear that Djokovic lacks motivation when competing on the Tour. This might be true because some of the smaller tournaments mean very little to him in the grand scheme of things.
Surely, he’s motivated at Grand Slams, but according to the 45-year-old, things are simply not the same for him after Federer’s departure and Nadal’s injury issues.
“For the Olympic Games, he will definitely have the motivation, but what will happen after? Without Federer, without Nadal, the circuit is a little different for him, it’s not the same motivation.”
“Boris Becker told me that it seemed to him that Novak had practically accepted Alcaraz’s superiority, which he had never done with Rafa and Roger. We are not far from the generational change. That’s life…”
As Ljubicic pointed out, there is reason for Djokovic to be motivated at the Olympics. He’s never won the Gold Medal and frequently talked about that as one of his biggest goals.
It’s by far his biggest regret in his career, and he would certainly like to change it at the upcoming Games in Paris. More than likely, it’s the last time he’ll have the chance to do so.
What happens after remains to be seen because, according to Ljubicic, and also Boris Becker, who previously coached Djokovic, it does seem like he’s accepted that Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are slowly overtaking him.
He’s certainly not going to go away. Instead, he will try to keep up, but as Ljubicic said, generational change doesn’t seem so far away. Still, with all the pointers going that way, it would be very foolish to discount Djokovic.
He won three of the four Grand Slams last year, and only when this season is over can we discuss how it went. He might win Gold at the Olympics, or the US Open, and that would completely change the narrative. Rivalries did push both him and the rest of the Big Three forward, but he may have new rivalries now.
