Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter Serves to Win

The only documentary and autobiography about the GOAT of tennis reveal why he is an inspirational fighter for freedom

Novak Djokovic is the GOAT of tennis and medical freedom. At 39, he has broken every record in his sport yet remains hungry for more. The upcoming 2026 US Open represents his best opportunity to win his 25th Grand Slam. Jannik Sinner has withdrawn due to a knee injury, while Carlos Alcaraz will be rusty after four months sidelined by a wrist injury. Novak’s two heirs have won 10 of the past 11 Grand Slams since he last prevailed at the 2023 US Open. This could be his last dance to retire on top.

What forged Novak into one of the mentally strongest athletes in history and a warrior for freedom? The Wolf in Winter and Serve to Win are the only film and book he has produced. The former was released last week, while the latter was published in 2013. They reveal the mindset of a champion who was willing to sacrifice playing in multiple grand slams that he was favored to win because he refused to get the COVID jab. He set the record straight in the documentary:

Because I didn’t need it. Why should I get the vaccine? I’m healthy, I’m an athlete. I had corona. I had immunity. I wasn’t a threat to anyone. There was no reason for me to get vaccinated. It’s my freedom to choose which that fundamental right that you have as a human being on this planet — the freedom to choose — which was taken from a lot of people…

99% of people don’t know what actually happened. They think that I was deported from Australia because I was not vaccinated. And that’s not true. In order to travel to Australia, you either had to be vaccinated, or if you were not vaccinated, you had to give evidence that you had corona in the previous six months. I was not vaccinated, but I had corona twice in the six months, so I was eligible. So, I’ve got the special exemption…

Later on, I find out there is another two people - one was a player, one was a coach - that entered the country based on the same medical exemption. So, it was all political. It had nothing to do with medical, it had nothing to do with anything. It was just political.

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Novak grew up in war-torn Serbia. As a child, he was determined to keep practicing through all the NATO bombings. At only 13, his parents borrowed money so that he could leave home to train in Germany. These difficult circumstances gave rise to his legendary resilience. That is why he always has the edge in stressful situations to come up clutch, even when crowds were against him as he crashed the Federer-Nadal rivalry.

He represents the Serbian spirit, which is why he was overjoyed to win gold for his country at the 2024 Olympics on an injured knee:

There’s a word in Serbian called inat. When people doubt you, when everyone is basically against you, that’s when you use that inat, that force of stubbornness to prove everybody wrong. And that inat is actually quite widespread in the mentality of Serbian people….

The curse of achieving every possible achievement that you could in our sport is that anything less than that is not good enough. The feeling of not good enough has been with me for a very long time, it's still with me…

As long as I have the drive, the passion, and most of all, as long as I feel I can win tournaments and I can be one of the best players in the world, I want to keep going. The number-one doubter is here. I’m the number-one doubter. And I’m trying to prove myself wrong more than anybody else.

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Tennis is a brutal sport. Most players retire after they turn 30. Novak has won almost half of his 24 Grand Slams after turning 30. Despite the demanding travel schedule, he is a doting father and husband. His kids have given him more motivation to keep going so that they can watch him play. His wife shared that his daughter opens up something special within the girl dad:

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In 2013, Novak published his only book called Serve to Win. It was a unique hybrid of autobiography, health advice, and cookbook. At that point, he had only won 5 Grand Slams and was far behind Federer/Nadal. Yet he had unlocked his potential with a new diet and discipline that would fuel him to surpass them. Many passages illuminate why he made his courageous stand a decade later.

Novak opens with his terrifying account of NATO bombing:

For 78 straight nights, my family and I hid out in my aunt’s bomb shelter. Every night at 8PM there was a siren that announced the danger and everybody would leave their homes. The whole night we would listen to detonations, and when the airplanes flew low, there would be a horrible noise as if the sky were torn apart. The feeling of helplessness dominated our lives. There was nothing we could do but to sit and wait and hope and pray…

But the war didn’t stop me from pursuing tennis. During the days, I would meet [Coach] Jelena somewhere in Belgrade to practice; she stuck by me and tried to help me live a normal life, even after her sister was fatally wounded… We’d go to the site of the most recent attacks, figuring that if they bombed one place yesterday, they probably wouldn’t bomb it today.

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Djokovic turns this unfathomable adversity into a white pill mentality of love:

We decided to stop being afraid. After so much death, so much destruction, we simply stopped hiding. Once you realize that you are truly powerless, a certain sense of freedom takes over… In fact, my countrymen began to make fun of how ridiculous our situation was. NATO was bombing the bridges over the Danube, so sometimes you would see people gathered at the bridges with bullseyes painted on their shirts, daring the bombs to hit them…

These experiences became lessons. To truly accept our own powerlessness is incredibly liberating… Whenever I feel like I am spoiled, I try to refocus myself and remember how it was back then. That puts things back in perspective. I remember the things that I really value: family, fun, joy, happiness, love. Love.

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He learned all the right lessons from war and communism:

Growing up in wartime taught me another crucial lesson: the importance of keeping an open mind and never ceasing to search for new ways of doing things. As a people, we were controlled by a government that kept information from us. The consequences of that continue to this day. Even though we have recovered from the war, we haven’t recovered from the mindset that communism instilled: that there is only one way to think, one way to live, one way to eat."

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Physical strength builds mental strength. Novak was MAHA before MAHA existed. He knew how Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Media destroyed bodies and souls:

You don’t have to live under a dictatorship to be manipulated by fear. It’s happening today, in every country in the world. We fear that we won’t have enough - food, money, or security. We work and work and work, and fill our bodies with fast food and processed food, because we are afraid to slow down. Then our bodies rebel. And so we go to the doctor because we have problems with our stomach, our head, our back. We want a cure. We get pills to cure the symptoms, but they just push our problems under the rug.

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Novak’s open mind led him to change his diet. Early in his career, he kept retiring from matches due to cramps and exhaustion. A doctor named Igor Cetojevic watched him suffer on TV and had a hunch it was related to gluten. A fascinating test confirmed his hypothesis:

Get someone to assume the same stance - right arm out, left hand on belly - and test their strength by pushing down on their right arm. Then have them hold a cell phone [or slice of bread] against their stomach, and test again. The radiation from the cell phone causes the body to react negatively and weakens the arm’s resistance, just as a food you’re intolerant to will. It is an eye-opening revelation - and will make you think twice about carrying your cell phone in your pants pocket.

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His concluding remarks predicted his COVID saga and will echo in eternity:

A lot of people, especially closed-minded people, are led by fear. That and anger are the most negative energies we have. What are closed-minded people afraid of? It could be many things: Fear that they are wrong, that someone might have a better way, that something has to change. Fear limits your ability to live your life… Some people at the top feed off negativity. The way I see it, pharmaceutical and food companies want people to feel fear. They want people to be sick.

How many TV ads are for fast foods and medicines? And what’s at the root of those messages? We’ll make you feel better with our products. But deeper down: We’ll make you fear that you don’t have enough of the tings you need. It’s crazy - even when you are completely healthy, they say you need supplements to stay that way.

Here’s a pattern I’d rather embrace: good food, exercise, openness, positive energy, great results. I’ve been living that pattern for several years now. It works better than the alternative. Don’t be afraid to accept your own truth, to change, to analyze. Put questions in perspective. Try to be objective but skeptical. And stay positive. That energy will fill your body and improve your health, fitness, and overall performance.

He lays out a full week of his diet and recipes - here is an example of one day:

Breakfast: 1 glass of room temperature water, Power Bowl Muesli with unsweetened almond milk or rice milk, 2 tablespoons honey, fruit

Midmorning snack: Gluten-free bread or crackers with avocado and tuna

Lunch: Mixed-greens salad, gluten-free pasta primavera

Afternoon snack: Apple with cashew butter, cantaloupe or other melon

Dinner: Kale caesar salad with quinoa, minestrone soup, simple herbed salmon.

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After eliminating these physical and mental blocks, Novak vaulted himself towards GOAT status with one of the dominant seasons in history in 2011. He won 10 titles on 3 different surfaces and defeated Nadal and Federer a total of 10 times collectively, his match record being 10–1 against them. He went on a 41-match win streak and set a then-record of 5 Masters titles won in a season.

Look at the raw emotion and love celebrating with his family after the 2023 Australian Open victory, the year after the country deported him:

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For more background on Novak, Serbia, and the US Open: