Novak Djokovic has opened up about never being \u201cas loved as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal\u201d as he was seen as \u201cthe third guy\u201d who broke the pair\u2019s dominance in men\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n
Federer and Nadal initially formed the Big Two as they swept all before them and when Djokovic emerged as a challenger, Fedal fans did not take too kindly to him.<\/p>\n
But even the Serbian\u2019s harshest critics were forced to accept that the Big Two have turned into the Big Three as the trio ruled the ATP Tour for more than two decades.<\/p>\n
Djokovic<\/a>, though, has won the race to be the greatest tennis player of all time as he holds most of the major records in tennis, including most Grand Slams won by a man (24), most ATP 1000 titles won (40) and and most weeks spent at No 1 in the ATP Rankings (428).<\/p>\n Despite his fierce battles with Federer and Nadal \u2013 who have retired \u2013 there has always been a mutual respect as he told former Croatian footballer and coach Slaven Bilic on Failure of Champions: \u201cJust because someone is my biggest rival doesn\u2019t mean I wish them harm, hate them, or want to do anything else on the court to defeat them. We fought for the win, and the better player won.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI\u2019ve never said a single bad word about them and never will. I looked up to them and still do, but I\u2019ve always gotten along better with Nadal.\u201d<\/p>\n John McEnroe calls Novak Djokovic \u2018Lebron of tennis\u2019 as he questions retirement call<\/a><\/p>\n Rafael Nadal\u2019s full message to \u2018Big 4\u2019 rivals amid emotional French Open farewell<\/a><\/p>\n But the \u201churt\u201d of not being accepted early on in his career is something that he didn\u2019t shake off easily, as he revealed that \u201cpeople didn\u2019t like\u201d the way he acted and the fact that he ended the Federer and Nadal era.<\/p>\n \u201cI acted and still felt like an unwanted child,\u201d the former world No 1 said. \u201cI asked myself why that was. It hurt me. Then I thought the fans would accept me if I acted differently, but that wasn\u2019t the case either.<\/p>\n \u201cI was never as loved as Federer and Nadal because I wasn\u2019t supposed to be there. I was the little guy, the third guy who came along and said: \u2018I\u2019m going to be No 1\u2019. Many people didn\u2019t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n But staying true to his values paid off in the end as he added: \u201cI am a man with many flaws, of course. Nevertheless, I have always tried to live with heart and good intentions and, ultimately, to be myself.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Novak Djokovic \u2018acted and felt like an unwanted child\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Novak Djokovic has opened up about never being \u201cas loved as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal\u201d as he was seen as \u201cthe third guy\u201d who broke the pair\u2019s dominance in men\u2019s tennis. Federer and Nadal initially formed the Big Two as they swept all before them and when Djokovic emerged as a challenger, Fedal fans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Novak Djokovic News<\/h3>\n