{"id":287057,"date":"2025-11-12T10:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/287057\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T10:45:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:45:15","slug":"novak-djokovic-rejected-emotional-wife-request-and-felt-empty-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/287057\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic rejected emotional wife request and ‘felt empty’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> admitted that he “felt empty” after rejecting his wife and family’s proposal to take a break from tennis. The 39-year-old looked back on his career with Piers Morgan<\/a> and reflected on a time when passion and joy had been completely taken away from the sport he dominated.<\/p>\n

Djokovic highlighted a match at Wimbledon<\/a> against Sam Querrey where, amid a rain interruption, he isolated himself from his team and stared blankly at a wall for half an hour, before returning to the court and being defeated. In the weeks prior to SW19, he had been urged to step away from tennis.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Piers Morgan<\/a>, the Serb said: \u201cI held all four Slams at the same time and I was one of the very few players in history to do that, I was telling all the people around me, my wife, family, they were like: \u2018Maybe you should take a little break and come back because you achieved it all\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo no no, don\u2019t worry about motivation, I have no issue with that. I am never going to experience something I have read or heard other athletes and their experiences, where it comes to the point where you are empty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like \u2018what is that? I am never going to experience that\u2019 and then I experienced it a few weeks later, for the first time ever. It was Court 1 at Wimbledon<\/a>, third round, I was playing Sam Querrey. I think it was third or fourth set and we had a rain interruption, we had two rain interruptions.<\/p>\n

“The first one my team joined me and we talked and I had a little stretch with the physio, went back and kept going, I was two sets to love down, won the third set, gained the momentum and felt better about being on the court. Another rain delay, I went back to the isolated room and my team comes in. I am like: ‘Guys you have to leave me alone, I just have to be by myself’.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t want a drink, I just stared at the wall for 20, 30 minutes and that’s the first time I felt really empty. That’s when I realised that all the stress and tension and excitement and anticipation, all the strong emotions I was feeling for whatever years, coming to that moment, my brain had enough and I needed to reset.<\/p>\n

“You have to reset and I did it many times in my career. I lost that match and I had a break and I came back and skipped a couple tournaments, played the final of the US Open and then that’s the year that Andy Murray<\/a> ended up as the year-end No. 1. He beat me at the O2 Arena.<\/p>\n

“After that match, even though I lost the points I had over him, everyone thought it was going to be a piece of cake finishing at No. 1, he went on a streak of four, five tournaments in a row and I didn’t care if I was going to finish No. 1 or not. That was the stage or condition I was at at that moment.<\/p>\n

“I just wanted to regain the love and passion I had for the sport, because I lost it.”<\/p>\n

Djokovic was beaten 7-6(6) 6-1 3-6 7-6(5) by Querrey in the third round of Wimbledon in 2016, where his hopes of completing a Calendar Slam were dashed by the American.<\/p>\n

It had marked Djokovic’s first defeat at a Major since the 2015 French Open<\/a> final. Andy Murray<\/a> would go on to win the tournament, defeating Milos Raonic in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic admitted that he “felt empty” after rejecting his wife and family’s proposal to take a break…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[151123,433,94355,150489,151124,33547,99,428],"class_list":["post-287057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-djokovic-piers","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-novak-djokovic-family","tag-novak-djokovic-interview","tag-novak-djokovic-wife","tag-piers-morgan","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}