A bit of tabloid article today 🙂
The legendary coach, Marian Vajda gave an exclusive interview to Slovak daily Sport about his split with also legendary player Novak Djokovic.
The PrintScreen of the article title in Sport daily
The most interesting facts from the interview:
- the decision about the split was made in November 2021 after ATP Finals
- the main reason lies in differences in opinions about Novak’s participation in Tokyo Olympic Games. Vajda thought that Novak should focus on US Open and skip Olympics. Djokovic did not follow his advice and did not win Olympics nor US Open due to fatigue.
- the second reason is that unvaccinated Djokovic will have a limited schedule (many tournaments will deny entry to unvaccinated players) and his coaching team with Ivanisevic is sufficient.
- the official statement about the split was released in February (three months after the decision was made) because in December and January the situation was tense due to the Djokovic versus Australia case regarding his participation at the Australian Open.
- Vajda is still a Djokovic supporter and fan.
You can read the full interview in Slovak here (with help of google translate also in English)
Loading ...My comment:
We all know that Vajda wanted to leave Djokovic a few years ago (remember Agassi and Becker’s experiment). However, he returned to the coaching team and split the tasks with Ivanisevic.
Now, the opinion difference was too big to cross. The situation would be different if Djokovic would take at least one of the titles (Olympics or US Open) but it did not happen.
With Djokovic’s status and a limited schedule, and Vajda’s desire to coach, it was no other choice than to split.
Now, I am curious if Vajda will be able to repeat such success with another player. I would like to see him doing the same job as Lendl with Andy Murray. Maybe Zverev should give him a call 🙂 And then the Grand Slam final Zverev – Djokovic would be really fun.
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