Next year's ATP calendar likely won't feature the Serbia Open but Novak Djokovic isn't giving up on that idea.
Besides being one of the best players of all time, Djokovic is also a very keen ambassador for the sport of tennis. He'd like to see it grow more and more, especially back home where the increased popularity of the sport is directly attributed to him.
Djokovic didn't have many opportunities to develop his game back home and he wants to change that for future generations. He was at the forefront of financing the development of the Novak Tennis Center in Belgrade which his family and he gave to the city this year.
One major way you can promote tennis in a country is by having a permanent tennis event. The Serbia Open proved to be a rather successful event considering it's a license that was loaned and not permanent. It returns this year which leaves Serbia without an event. Asked about that, Novak provided an update on recent developments.
For the last four or five months, my brother (Djordje) has been in touch with the ATP and the owners of some tournament’s licenses, trying to come up with a solution for 2024, but there is no feedback for now.
As I said earlier, it’s not that simple because the ATP is not giving out new licenses, and the most existing tournaments are profitable, so the owners understandably don’t want to give that up,“ commented Djokovic, but he remains hopeful.
The major problem as Djokovic highlighted is that you can't simply buy into the calendar. There is a finite number of events and you need to come up with a solution that will replace an existing event. That's not easy to do but Djokovic and his brother Djordje are not going to give up that easily.
On the other hand, there are a few tournaments that are not that profitable, the ones that are struggling organisationally and economically… I won’t name them, of course, but we are in dialogue with them
We would love to establish a tradition of a tennis tournament in Serbia. At this point, 250-tournament is most realistic, anything above that would be biting off more than we can chew. There are going to be a lot of changes in the ATP calendar starting in 2025, so we’ll see.
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