“Djokovic’s lost the guys he made history with” – Agassi issues ‘inspiration’ warning for Serbian

It is said that setting a target is tougher than chasing a target. As per Andre Agassi, the former world No 1 from the US, Novak Djokovic will face a similar challenge in 2025 — his first year without Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on the ATP Tour.

Federer hung up his racquet in September 2022 and Nadal played his farewell match in November this year, leaving Djokovic as the only Big Three member active on the competitive circuit. The trio dominated men’s tennis between 2002-22 to accumulate 63 Grand Slam trophies combined.

For the most part, however, the Serbian inspired himself to chase the other two in the all-time Major winners’ tally and surpassed them in 2023. Moreover, he clinched the ever-elusive Olympic gold at the Paris Games in 2024, essentially completing tennis.

Thus, the 37-year-old’s potential exploits in the future won’t be about eclipsing Federer or Nadal but creating new milestones and Andre Agassi believes the task will be tough.

“It’s hard to say, Father Time always wins,” Agassi said during a recent TiE summit in Bengaluru, India. “He [Novak Djokovic] has already done so much for so long, it’s hard to imagine longer. We said that about Roger too. I think he’ll run out of the energy more than the capability. Cannot be easy, especially when the people you came to the dance with have left, that’s a big thing.

“When Pete [Sampras] retired, it was a blow to me. It set me back a little bit. It made me rediscover my inspirations on some level. Djokovic’s lost the guys that he made history with. So, it’ll probably get tougher and tougher emotionally, but I would never bet against him. Bet against him at your own peril.”

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Djokovic will notably go into the 2025 season with Andy Murray, another former rival, as his coach — a partnership that has caught many by surprise. But Agassi, who interestingly coached the 24-time Grand Slam champion briefly in 2017-18, sees an upside to the situation.

“In any coach-student relationship you need trust and trust can take time, but it’s nice when it starts with believing in somebody because you know that they know your experience. There’s an asset to their history as competitors,” the American added in Bengaluru.

“Any success of a relationship is based on complete buy-in and that’s always the part you have to wait and see. It’s not what I know that changes your career, information doesn’t lead to transformation, somebody has to counter that. That’s the connector. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of trust immediately, we’ll see how the results go.”

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