WATCH: Novak Djokovic racket smashes and angry moments on court – ‘Poor racket’

Shahida Jacobs
A fan with a broken Novak Djokovic racket
A tennis fan with the broken racket of Novak Djokovic (Eleanor Crooks/PA)

On the back of some tongue-in-cheek replies to a recent story about Novak Djokovic’s racket brand, we have decided to give you compilations of the tennis great’s racket smashes and angry on-court moments.

This week Tennis365 published a story on the 23-time Grand Slam winner’s main sponsor, HEAD, under the headline: “What racket does Novak Djokovic use?”

And one of the first replies to the piece was “Maybe ask the Wimbledon net post?” while someone else commented “a broken one”.

Yes, the comments were flippant and resulted in a few nods of the heads and some chuckles.

The comments, of course, were in reply to Djokovic’s recent outburst at Wimbledon when he smashed his racket into the post during the final against Carlos Alcaraz.

In case you missed it, here is a video of said outburst and racket smash.

The moment of frustration came early in the fifth set as Djokovic was broken and it resulted in a broken racket, although the Serbian gifted the mangled piece of equipment to a fan afterwards.

In case you can’t watch the above video, here is the BBC’s version of the racket smash.

During the post-match press conference, Djokovic was asked about the incident and he replied: “There’s no much to talk about that. Second one was frustration. I had break points in the second game. Yeah, just tough, tough couple of points. He played amazing to break my serve, which was enough to win the fifth.”

Djokovic was slapped with an $8,000 fine (roughly £6,000) for “racket abuse” the day after the final, but it is small change for someone who collected £1,175,000 for finishing runner-up.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time and it is unlikely to be the last time Djokovic has taken his frustrations out on his racket.

And just to be clear, Djokovic is not the first or the only player to obliterate a racket when the going gets tough as it was done long before he arrived in tennis and will happen long after he retires.

Enjoy!

During one of his infamous racket smashes at the 2021 Australian, Djokovic admitted that he was not proud of his antics, but also felt it helped him to defeat Alexander Zverev.

“It was kind of a relief for me. I mean I wouldn’t recommend this kind of relief channelling, if you want to call it [that],” he said.

“Of course I am not proud of these kind of moments. When I break the racket, of course I’m not proud of that. You go through a lot of emotions, you go through a lot of inner battles and everyone is different.

“I have my own demons that I have to fight with, and I’m sure everybody else has them too. Everyone has their own way of dealing with that.

“To me it happens and then today it actually helped, even though I don’t intentionally do it in order for it to help me.

“It’s just an accumulation of things that happen in big moments and some shots that were missed. I kind of just let it go. Poor racket.”