Novak Djokovic is likely to finish his tennis career as the most accomplished tennis player of all time yet he also wants to be the greatest, something John McEnroe thinks takes guts.
Djokovic has been quite open about his belief that he is truly the best tennis player out there and it's a needed ingredient if you hope to dominate the sport the way he did. You have to have a certain dose of self-belief otherwise it will never work out. His name is a prominent part of the GOAT debate even though he rarely speaks about it.
Nothing in the GOAT debate is objective as one would say it's Djokovic, somebody else might say it's Federer, and as Nicolas Mahut once explained, even if Djokovic breaks all the records there will still be a debate. He himself talked about it often explaining that it does motivate him, breaking records and leaving a legacy.
He also carefully avoided naming himself as THE GOAT while being grateful for being in the conversation. The willingness to discuss it openly has impressed John McEnroe as it takes guts according to him and not everyone was willing to do that in the past.
"You can easily make an argument for all three [Federer, Djokovic, Nadal]. It certainly would have more people talking about that because he would be the only one that would win all four of them [Grand Slams] at least three times. I don't have the records in front of me, but he has talked about it so openly, that it's a goal of his and he embraces that. I think that takes a lot of guts in itself to say 'I want it' rather than just say 'I want to do the best I can and whatever happens happens'.
Like many people who follow tennis, McEnroe has his own thoughts on the matter. His approach is to give all players their flowers naming all of them the greatest of all time. It's probably the fairest way to break down the situation while acknowledging the greatness of all of them.
At the moment for me, Nadal is the greatest player that has ever lived on clay. Novak would be the same on hard courts. Roger on grass, even though Djokovic has beaten Roger a few times at Wimbledon. Certainly he's right there, and I think it's amazing because he was trying to get into that mix for so long. To be playing so well at his age is hard to believe, actually."
Unless Djokovic runs away with the grand slam race winning 25,26 of them, it will be hard for many to universally proclaim him the greatest of all time. As with all things, it's likely going to end up being a subjective opinion.
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