In honor of Novak Djokovic celebrating his 37th birthday: A look at the Serb's extraordinary career in numbers
World No. 1 Novak Djokovic celebrated his 37th birthday on May 22. The Serb is entering his late 30s but has shown no signs of slowing down.
Djokovic has not been at his lethal best lately, registering 13 wins out of 18 matches so far in 2024. He recently suffered a third-round exit at the Italian Open and is currently competing at the Geneva Open.
Even if the Serb does not win another trophy in tennis, there is no denying that he has had one of the most illustrious sports careers in history with 24 Grand Slams. On that note, let's take a look at some of Novsak Djokovic's achievements so far.
Novak Djokovic’s glittering career in numbers
In terms of pure statistics, nobody in the history of the game can match the Serb. Over the course of his career, he has accumulated the kind of numbers most of the others can only dream of.
The Serb has won a whopping 24 Grand Slams, which is the most by any man and is the joint-most by any player, male or female. Among Grand Slams, Djokovic has won the Australian Open a record ten times, which is a tournament record. The Serb has won seven Wimbledon titles, which is more than any man apart from Roger Federer.
He clinched four US Open titles while winning the French Open thrice. He remains the only man to have won all Grand Slams at least three times.
Djokovic also holds the record for spending the highest number of weeks as the world No. 1, as he is about to enter the 427th week at the top. It is a record for players of either gender, with Steffi Graf a distant second at 377 weeks Roger Federer is the second in the list among men with 302 weeks, which is more than 100 weeks less than Djokovic’s tally.
The Serb has also won 40 Masters 1000 titles, which is the most in history. Rafael Nadal has the next highest tally with 36 titles to his credit.
Djokovic has also won a record seven ATP Finals titles, with Federer and Pete Sampras next in the list with six and five titles, respectively. The Serb has 98 titles to his credit, which is less than Federer’s tally of 103.
However, the Serb has already won 71 big titles (24 Majors, 40 Masters 1000 tournaments and seven ATP Finals), while the Swiss managed only 54 in his career. Nadal, meanwhile, has not yet been able to win the ATP Finals and has 58 big titles (22 Majors and 36 Masters 1000 titles) to his credit.
The only hole in Djokovic’s otherwise flawless CV so far is his inability to win the Olympic gold. He will get an opportunity to fill in that gap at this year’s Olympics in Paris. Should he be able to do that, his CV will become water-tight and beyond the reach of anybody else. Even if he is not able to do that, he will quite probably go down in the history as the greatest of all time.