📍Kopaonik, Serbia
1987 – 1999“Novak Djokovic was born in Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia, in May 1987. His parents, Srdjan and Dijana, were both keen skiers, and they ran a pizza and pancake restaurant in Kopaonik, a ski resort high in the mountains of southern Serbia, where the family spent long stretches of his early childhood. When he was about four, three tennis courts were built across the car park from the restaurant, and little Novak spent hours watching the players through the fence and hitting balls against the wall. When Jelena Genčić, a former Yugoslav champion who had coached Monica Seles, ran a summer camp on those courts, the six-year-old Novak turned up early with a perfectly packed tennis bag: racket, towel, water bottle, banana and wristbands. She called him the greatest talent she had seen since Seles, and she became his coach and second mother, teaching him tennis but also classical music and poetry. He also loved skiing and football, and was close to his younger brothers, Marko and Djordje. In 1999, when NATO bombed Belgrade, the family spent many nights in a shelter, and on his twelfth birthday they heard planes overhead; yet he kept training each day, with Genčić choosing courts in areas bombed the night before. Soon afterwards, he went to train at the Pilić academy in Germany. He went on to win a record 24 Grand Slam titles and Olympic gold in 2024, and he returned to Kopaonik, emotionally, to the courts where his love of tennis began.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
🛰️ Satellite view · © Google