{"id":273731,"date":"2025-11-20T14:51:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273731\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T14:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:51:14","slug":"novak-djokovic-makes-surprise-davis-cup-appearance-for-heartwarming-reason-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273731\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic makes surprise Davis Cup appearance for heartwarming reason | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> has made a surprise appearance at the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna to honour the late Nikola Pilic<\/a>. The world No. 4 ended his season by winning his 101st career title<\/a> at the Hellenic Championship in Athens before withdrawing from the ATP Finals<\/a>. Although Serbia did not qualify for this year\u2019s Davis Cup Finals, Djokovic made the journey for a special tribute ceremony in honour of Pilic, a man he branded his \u2018tennis father\u2019.<\/p>\n

Pilic passed away in September of this year, aged 86. The tennis star reached the final of the French Open in singles and finished runner-up in Wimbledon<\/a> doubles during his playing days, representing Yugoslavia. And he has long been credited for helping Djokovic become the greatest tennis player of all time.<\/p>\n

He also had an incredible Davis Cup record, becoming the first captain to help three different nations clinch the World Cup of men\u2019s tennis. He led the German team – which then included Boris Becker and Michael Stich – to win the trophy three times in 1988, 1989, and 1993.<\/p>\n

Pilic then captained Croatia to their maiden Davis Cup title in 2005. Having a close relationship with Djokovic, he then started acting as an advisor for the Serbian team from 2007, and they lifted the trophy in 2010.<\/p>\n

Davis Cup organisers honoured Pilic\u2019s incredible life and career with a special ceremony ahead on Wednesday\u2019s tie between Austria and defending champions Italy. And Djokovic flew out for the occasion.<\/p>\n

The 24-time Grand Slam champion was recently left in tears during another tribute to Pilic<\/a> at the Hellenic Championship, where Djokovic\u2019s brother is the tournament director. After Djokovic won his opening match against Alejandro Tabilo, a video honouring Pilic was played on screens around the arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry for this but he was more than just a mentor and a coach to me. He was a part of my family to me and my brothers. He has helped so much and I definitely wouldn\u2019t be who I am today without him,\u201d the world No. 4 told the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe passed away a few months ago and I want to ask your support to give him respect and the tribute that he deserves, the legend that he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Djokovic was joined on court by friends and coaches from Pilic’s academy, and said he would celebrate his old mentor for \u201cas long as he lived\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pilic took the Serb under his wing when he was just 10 years old. Djokovic started training at his academy in Germany in 1999, and Pilic awarded the Olympic champion with his first wildcard to make his professional debut at a Futures event in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic has made a surprise appearance at the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna to honour the late…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[14470,111056,112477,72533,6766,101,118,872,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-273731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-davis-cup","tag-davis-cup-finals","tag-niki-pilic","tag-nikola-pilic","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}