Tennis great makes Novak Djokovic Grand Slam and retirement prediction – ‘He deserves it all’

Winning the Olympics-US Open double will require a Herculean effort from Novak Djokovic, but tennis legend Chris Evert believes if the Serbian does indeed pull it off and capture his 25th Grand Slam then he could decide to “leave the game”.

Djokovic completed his tennis “fairy tale” at the Paris Games as he finally captured gold in the singles, defeating Carlos Alcaraz in the finale at Roland Garros.

With the medal, he became only the fifth player – men and women – to achieve the career Golden Slam of winning singles gold at the Olympics and all four Grand Slams.

There is not much left for Djokovic to achieve in the game with most speculating that his retirement date could be close.

The 24-time Grand Slam winner himself has insisted he still has a few more years left in the tank, but Evert believes winning this year’s US Open – where he is the defending champion – could see him change his mind.

“I think if he wins the 25th major, I would think he would leave the game. I mean, I don’t know, he would break that tie with Margaret Court. He’s won the Olympics,” the 18-time Grand Slam winner said during an ESPN US Open preview.

“That was such a big goal for him, winning the Olympics. As far as winning the US Open, does the 25th mean as much? Can he get that energy going as much as he got in the Olympics?

“He’s going to come up against, again, some really tough competition. Can he do it two times in a row, the Olympics and the US Open? I would allow him to retire after that, I would say ‘Okay, you have everybody in the world’s permission to retire (laughter).

“That would be epic if he could do that. But he’s a driven person. He’s a very driven person beyond anybody that I’ve ever seen. He’s had a lot of ups and downs in his life, in his marriage, in his personal relationships, I think, because of being so driven.

“He also has worked everything out. He’s a communicator and he works things out. He seems to be in the best place he’s been in a long time right now.”

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Djokovic holds most records in tennis, including most Grand Slams won by a man as he is two ahead of Rafael Nadal and four clear of Roger Federer, and most weeks at No 1 as he has spent an astonishing 428 weeks at the top of the ATP Rankings.

The Serbian was long considered the “bad guy” of tennis after he broke the Nadal-Federer dominance, but Evert says he “deserves all” the credit as he “worked his butt off his whole life”.

“I think it would be like Herculean if he wins this tournament and gets to 25. I mean, I think hands down he would have to be the greatest player ever, male player ever. I think he already is in a lot of people’s minds,” the American said.

“I just think for him even to have won the Olympics, after what he went through with the surgery, with seemingly Alcaraz starting to take over, starting to get his number as he did at Wimbledon, for him to come back and find that resilience and find that level of tennis, that actually we haven’t seen the whole year, because he hasn’t won a tournament the whole year, it was like a fairy tale.

“I wouldn’t have expected it. It was a fairy tale. But you know what? I believe in karma. This guy has worked his butt off his whole life, put up with a lot from the press and from being kind of the bad guy with Federer and Nadal. He deserves it. He deserves it all.”

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