Djokovic Wins In London And Dedicates It To His Father

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 13th November 2012

Djokovic Wins In London And Dedicates It To His Father

epa03468782 Novak Djokovic of Serbia serves to Roger Federer of Switzerland during their singles final match at the ATP World Tour Finals in London, Britain, 12 November 2012. EPA/AYBIGE MERT |

Novak Djokovic dedicated his victory over Roger Federer at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London to his ill father Srdjan who has spent more than a fortnight in the intensive care unit of a Belgrade hospital.

During the recent BNP Paribas Masters in Paris Djokovic flew back to Serbia to be at the bedside of his father, who is reported to be suffering from an acute respiratory illness.

Although still hospitalized, Djokovic Sr. is believed to be making a recovery but his successful son, now $ US 1,760,000 richer after completing the entire tournament undefeated, said: “This was a title for him,”

“He’s much better now. At a certain stage it was very critical. We didn’t know what tomorrow brings, but now he’s much better. “He’s still in intensive care. I’m going to visit him and see how it goes and try to bring the trophy with me and at least make him smile.”

Djokovic admitted that his achievement of retaining the year-end top ranking felt comparable to his amazing achievements of 2011, when he won three of the four Grand Slam titles and racked up a 43-match winning streak.

This year Djokovic reclaimed the Australian Open title but lost out in the French Open and US Open finals. Nevertheless he said: “All in all, it was a fantastic year where I’ve had to face a lot of difficulties off the courts as well.

“Especially coming into this tournament, having my father fighting his own fight for health gave me extra strength that I wanted to play for him in a way, that’s one of the reasons I really gave it all every match, especially the final.”

Djokovic will shortly be heading to Brazil where he will play an exhibition match against former Tennis Masters Cup champion Gustavo Kuerten before taking a well earned two weeks holiday.

“I actually feel more satisfied right now than last year, even though I had an incredible 2011,” he said. I feel this year, considering the circumstances that I had to face on and off the court, the expectations, all these things, has been even more successful for me.

“This was my time, my moment, and I needed to step in and really believe in my ability. So throughout the whole season I’ve had lots of success and had some disappointing losses at big events, in a couple major finals.”

Djokovic fell behind in both sets against Federer but over the course of two hours and 14 minutes he fought his way past the Swiss who was intent on winning the year ending title for the third year in succession at the London venue and the seventh time overall.

“Roger is somebody that’s aggressive, that likes to finish his points very quickly” said Djokovic. “Especially when he’s a break up, he’s probably the best player I ever played against, he comes up always with his ‘A’ game when he’s up. It’s very difficult to handle that.

“But I managed to gets lot of his shots back into the court, being passive, a couple of metres behind the baseline, coming into an aggressive position. That was one of the goals tonight, to always try to get him into the long rallies where I think I had the better chance.”