NEW YORK — He went around the world Wednesday night.
As Novak Djokovic received treatment on his abdominal muscles during the first set of his second-round U.S. Open match against compatriot Laslo Djere, television cameras picked out a figure in the crowd. He was dressed in a white t-shirt, the figure of Djokovic emblazoned across the chest, holding the world in his hands. “Nole against the world,” it read.
As Djokovic stared into the middle distance of Arthur Ashe Stadium, wondering what to do about the heat and the humidity and the rhythm of his serve, the man stood stoic behind.
At the end, when Djere had coughed up a double break in the second set before retiring injured at 4-6, 4-6, 0-1 with an abdominal issue of his own, he was in the concourse, holding the “Nole against the world” shirt. “I made a beautiful t-shirt for him,” he told The Athletic, showing that Djokovic signed the shirt after the match.
“I made these t-shirts in Australia. I made this t-shirt because everybody was against him,” he said.
He is Zoran Pavlovic, Djokovic superfan, and for one night on Arthur Ashe, a character in yet another story of Djokovic toiling against the world and against himself, before finding a way through.
“He seems to be coming by himself and always has some interesting designs on his shirts,” Djokovic said of Pavlovic.
Zoran Pavlovic’s second t-shirt laid out his theory on the GOATs of tennis, basketball, and football. (Lukas Weese / The Athletic)
Pavlovic, who said in a 2011 interview with Santa Monica Daily Press that he emigrated to America from Belgrade in 1976 for surgery to correct an oversized aorta, swapped his shirt in the second set. The second shirt read “Djokovic, Jordan, Messi,” comparing the Serbian to legends of basketball and football. By then, Djokovic had done what he has done at so many Grand Slam tournaments: translated a stumbling, sweating, unsteady performance — exacerbated by the heat and humidity at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center — into a scoreboard that reads in his favor.
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He effortlessly broke Djere to love in the tenth game, asking the crowd for acclaim after winning points despite largely looking lost.
“I knew coming into the match that if I don’t serve well, which was the case, I’m going to have to really grind and work for my points a lot,” he said when it was done.
“I have to be happy with the win and happy that in important moments I managed to play one ball more than him over the net.”
Pavlovic, who appeared to break out a cigar as a tricky looking situation unfurled into something smoother, said he has followed Djokovic around the world. On one recent trip, he ran into trouble. Pavlovic was ejected from Rod Laver Arena at the Australian Open in January 2023, after wearing a ‘Z’ symbol t-shirt that he had designed. The symbol has been adopted by pro-Putin sympathizers in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the time, Pavlovic said it simply meant ‘Z’ for Zoran. He then attended the rest of the tournament, which Djokovic won, beating Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas in three sets.
In New York, he said “I spend lots of time, lots of money, lots of love for him.” By the time Djere gave up the match, losing the second set from a double break down, the world — or at least Djokovic’s body, his serve, and the New York weather — might have seemed less against him. Pavlovic wore his opinion for all to see.
(Top photo: U.S. Open)
