Inside The Mind of
Goran Ivaniesvic
Interviewed by Mark Hodgkinson
You'll always have some negative thoughts and conflict in your head. I had a good Goran and a Bad Goran. Bad Goran was influenced by the people around him, by the court, and he wanted to fight with everybody, and he wanted to leave the court.
Good Goran said to Bad Goran, Come on, it's not over yet, let's fight. It was a little chit-chat in my head. It was between points, and then sitting on my chair between games. You have to call 911 and you need the emergency voice to say to the bad voice, come on, be good, let's play.
The problem is in tennis is that everything goes so quickly in your head, from good to bad, from bad to good. Whatever you do, you have to make a quick decision, and hopefully it will be a good decision. And hopefully whatever you're thinking at that moment will be for the best.
The faster you get out of that conflict, the better. Two minutes later, don't start thinking Why did I make that decision? That's wrong. You make that decision in the moment and you stick with it.
Superstitious Goran
Every morning of the 2001 of the 2001 Wimbledon tournament I would watch the Teletubbies for 15 minutes ( a British kids' cartoon series featuring multi-coloured toddlers of a mythological alien species). Every evening I would eat the same meal at the same restaurant. For me that wasn't such a big deal. Those routines were fun and by doing those things I felt much more relaxed.
When I played at Wimbledon I always used the same shower in the locker room, and the same toilet. Sometimes I had to wait if someone was in there, but that's OK. I also didn't want to walk on the lines on the court.
Sometimes I wanted to use the same ball, or at the changeover I didn't get up from the chair unitl the other guy stood up - I waited. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's fun. For me I relax like that. Everyone relaxes in different ways.
During the changeovers I liked to look at the crowd and see who was sitting there. I knew everybody who was sitting there. That was calming. I don't know why. It's thinking about something else rather than tennis. You need to really concentrate for three or four hours, so doing these things is a way of soothing your mind a little bit.
Racket Smashing Goran
Smashing rackets is a good thing. The people booing you, they've probably been complaining that people haven't been breaking rackets, and that tennis is too boring and there are no characters. Then they're not happy when people are breaking rackets. I mean what the fuck, they should make up their minds. If you want to break a racket, you should be allowed to break a racket. If like me, you have a talent for it, you can break your racket on any surface.
It's not a problem smashing rackets. If you want to smash the racket smash the racket, and take a new one, but forget about the one you've just smashed.
A lot of the time I would smash the racket and then I would spend the next 5 games thinking about the racket. I was thinking: Why did I break that racket? Should I have broken that racket?
That was my mistake, thinking about it too much. If you want to break the racket just break the motherfucker and stop thinking about it. Take a new one and just forget about it.
But don't break the last one. I was the first person ever to lose a match because I had smashed everything and run out of rackets. It wasn't that satisfying. The moment I broke that last racket, I was happy, and then I realized, Fuck I don't have any more rackets. And I felt stupid.
