Djokovic's great change

“The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem.”

Djokovic's great change

                  

 This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's July 23, 2012 Body Issue. 

IF DJOKOVIC struggling to find a foundation for belief, it came one afternoon in 2010 with a random phone call from a stranger who knew nothing about tennis.

That January, Dr. Igor Cetojevic and his wife were flipping through channels on their TV in Cyprus when they stumbled across coverage of the Australian Open. Djokovic was playing against big-serving Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarterfinals. Cetojevic, a Serbian soccer fan, knew nothing about the technical aspects of tennis and didn't consider himself a fan. But his wife liked the sport and Djokovic was his countryman, so he stopped for a few minutes to watch.

William West/AFP/Getty ImagesDjokovic battled Jo-Wilfried Tsonga -- and his own fitness -- at the 2010 Aussie Open.

Djokovic had played well in the first three sets, winning two of them, and appeared poised to close out the match. Then, early in the fourth set, his breathing became labored, and his pace slowed. He called for a trainer. He leaned against the net between points. Tsonga seized momentum and ran away with the match. The television commentators blamed asthma.

"This is not asthma," Cetojevic said as he watched.

Cetojevic had spent the prior 20 years practicing alternative theories of medicine -- acupuncture, biofeedback, Chinese holistic medicine and magnetotherapy -- and knew that asthma symptoms were usually at their worst in the morning. This match was being played at night, under ideal weather conditions, and Djokovic had performed without problem for the first three sets. Cetojevic suspected Djokovic's breathing issue resulted from an imbalance in his digestive system -- particularly an accumulation of toxins in his large intestine. From a couch in Cyprus, he made his diagnosis.

"I think I can help him," he told his wife.

Integral development

He reached out to Djokovic through a series of mutual contacts, and they met for the first time that July at a Davis Cup match in Croatia. Cetojevic explained that he wanted to help Djokovic with the "physical, mental, emotional and spiritual." Djokovic agreed to an initial evaluation, and the doctor checked his pulse and recorded his eating habits. He connected the straps of a biofeedback device to Djokovic's wrists and forehead to measure stress, environmental toxins, brainwaves and food allergies. He told Djokovic his body was sensitive to gluten and dairy and suggested some basic dietary changes.

A few days later, Djokovic met again with Cetojevic. He was already feeling better, he said, and he wanted Cetojevic to join the Team. "I will follow your instructions," he told the doctor.

Changing nutrition

For the next year, Cetojevic traveled everywhere with Djokovic and advised him on everything. "He had no idea how to eat," Cetojevic explained, and so he told him. No more cookies or pizza, even if he had grown up grabbing a few slices each day from his family's pizza parlor in Serbia. No more watching TV or playing video games while eating, because it kept him from being "present with his food." No more heavy meals with big portions of meat; he would eat lightly cooked vegetables and rice instead. No more sugary snacks during matches when he could have natural fruit bars.

He instructed Djokovic to bless his food and to start every day with herbal tea before eating gluten-free cereal with fresh berries and nuts. And just in case Djokovic was tempted to waver from the routine, Cetojevic often made the meals himself.

Already skinny, Djokovic began to lose weight. "Some people around him were alarmed," Cetojevic says, "but I encouraged them to be patient knowing that, in time, his body would start to function better."

Mental exercises - meditation

Meanwhile, Cetojevic continued to help Djokovic with the mental parts of his game through daily exercises ranging from the traditional to the obscure: emotional counseling, color therapy, meditation, visualization. Cetojevic provided Djokovic with reading material, asking him to regularly read through The Four Agreements, a book by a New Age spiritualist about looking inward to attain happiness and peace. Cetojevic thought the book would resonate with Djokovic in his rivalries with Federer and Nadal. "He was focusing on their strength and power and losing his center," Cetojevic says. "I helped him focus on his inner strength."

Congratulating Djokovic during the trophy ceremony at the U.S. Open, Nadal told him, "What you did this year is probably impossible to repeat."

If members of the Team remained suspicious, they were soon encouraged by Djokovic's convincing results. He was faster, with increased stamina, his body recovering more quickly between matches. He stopped retiring from matches. When he did make mistakes, he broke his habit of looking back at his coaches' box with wide-eyed desperation, instead closing his eyes and taking deep breaths. He beat Federer in five sets at the U.S. Open in 2010, overcoming two match points.

Suddenly the rout was on: He won 43 consecutive matches and 10 titles in 2011 -- beating Nadal in six of those finals, including at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. By the middle of the year, he'd attained the No. 1 ranking. It was among the most dominating years in the history of modern men's tennis. Congratulating Djokovic during the trophy ceremony at the U.S. Open, Nadal told him, "What you did this year is probably impossible to repeat."

Cetojevic attended most of the significant matches, but he rarely focused on the tennis. "If I was asked the results of the match, I would not be able to tell you," he says. "I wasn't watching where the ball was going. I was watching the player's body language."

Djokovic thanked Cetojevic at a 2011 news conference, calling him "the great doctor." He went on to explain his transformation. "I learned to believe," he said.