Novak Djokovic always finds the world to shock the whole world. Yesterday, the 24-time Grand Slam champion announced that his coach at the 2025 Australian Open will be his former great rival Andy Murray.
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The former Scottish champion who said goodbye to professional tennis at the Paris Olympics this summer has always had an excellent relationship with Nole, with whom he has shared his entire career.
Obviously Murray has no experience as a coach and it is not clear how long their collaboration will last, but the 3-time Grand Slam champion will be alongside Novak in Melbourne next January.
The 37-year-old from Belgrade has just experienced a very special season in his career, in which he won the gold medal at the Olympics and fulfilled his biggest dream. At the same time, the Serbian champion has not won a Grand Slam title in the span of an entire season for the first time since 2017 and for the second time since 2011.
The feeling is that Djokovic needs a very strong motivation to remain competitive at the highest level, which is why he decided to hire Murray as his new coach. The 24-time Grand Slam champion will be looking to win his 11th title in Melbourne, but for the first time he will not be the top favorite.
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The Serbian legend will be the No.7 seed at the next AO and is likely to have a very tough draw. The former world number 1 has lost positions in the ATP rankings having decided to skip the last tournaments of 2024, the Rolex Paris Masters and the ATP Finals in Turin, in which he was supposed to defend the titles won in 2023.
Gill Gross on Nole and Andy
The 37-year-old from Belgrade could have his last chance to win a Major title next year, which is why he will work very hard during the pre-season.
On his official YouTube channel, top analyst Gill Gross commented on Nole's shocking decision to hire Murray: Heading into 2025 Novak Djokovics next coach will be one Andy Murray. The three-time major champion, the former world No 1, the two-time Olympic gold medalist.
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A man who Novak has battled 36 times in his career will now be joining him in his coaching box, only about six months removed from retirement. We have seen super coaches before we saw Boris Becker come in, we saw Ivan Lendl come, we saw Stefan Edberg come in. Some great players have decided to become coaches all of them were a decade or more off of playing.
Gross continued: First of all Murray is a guy who whose qualities have been very evident as a player. He is highly opinionated, highly analytical, because of those things he was known as a notoriously difficult player to coach because coaches would come in and they would have certain opinions and often Andy would have his own opinion.
I think that led to a lot of coaching relationships where it was difficult for coaches to break through and kind of shape Andy in the way that they might have wanted to because Murray was so strong-headed and had such strong opinions about his own game and what he should have been doing that it was difficult for a coach to actually break through. He has also studied all of these players. The fact that he is so fresh off the tour I do believe gives him a pretty unique advantage."
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A surprising decision
At this stage of his career, Novak must find some new solutions if he wants to surprise opponents much younger than him. His gap to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz has widened in the last twelve months and the Serbian ace has suffered several painful defeats against these two players.
For this reason, Novak will try to arrive in Melbourne in top shape. The 24-time Grand Slam champion will play a tournament in the first week of 2025, which could be the Brisbane ATP 250. Djokovic only participated in that tournament in 2009, but he could be very useful to gain rhythm in view of the first Major of the new season.
The former world No. 1 has played two finals this year, at the Wimbledon Championships and the Rolex Shanghai Masters, losing to Alcaraz and Sinner without winning a set.
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Novak played his best tennis in the tournament he was most interested in, the Paris Olympics, in which he accomplished an epic feat by winning the gold medal on his least congenial surface and without losing a single set during his run. His performance in the final against Alcaraz shocked the whole world, which crowned him as one of the best athletes in the history of sport. That loss - instead - conditioned Carlitos in the second half of the season.
