Novak Djokovic

Novak Djokovic will go down in history as one of the greatest tennis players of all time having won 24 Grand Slams. No player has been world No.1 for as many weeks as Djokovic, who has 428 to Roger Federer's 310 and Rafael Nadal's 209.

There are few players who can claim to rival Djokovic's level of success. Born in Belgrade in what was then Yugoslavia, Djokovic’s father is of Montenegrin extraction while his mother is Croatian - but Djokovic himself considers himself Serbian. He began playing tennis at the age of four and showed an almost immediate aptitude for the sport, working with Jelena Gencic until, at the age of 12, she arranged for him to move to the Nikola Pilic tennis academy in Germany. Nine years later, it paid off when Djokovic won his first Grand Slam, the 2008 Australian Open.

It would take him another three years - Federer and Nadal getting in the way again - before he would add a second, again the Australian, but doing so opened the floodgates. By the end of 2014, when he finished the year as world No 1 for the third time, he already had seven major titles. But in many ways, his greatest achievement was yet to come.

From January 2015 to June 2016, he won five out of six Grand Slams; only Stan Wawrinka’s French Open triumph interrupted the streak.

He has seven Wimbledon titles - one less than Federer - and 10 Australian Opens. He also won Serbia a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, beating Carlos Alcaraz in the final.

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