Off-colour Djoko stares at a complex coaching question

Among all the enterprising and left-field faces to have sat in the coaching box of Novak Djokovic — and it's a rich spread — Andy Murray's stint was the shortest. Yet not quite the sweetest.

- Rutvick Mehta

MUMBAI:

The Serb, through his career of going from a temperamental young talent to a certified great stamped by 24 Grand Slams, has made some surprising choice of coaches. Right from Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic and Radek Stepanek to, more unofficially, Andre Agassi. Even by those standards, Murray was a shock.

It ignited a spark in Djokovic at this Australian Open where he reached the semi-finals, before fizzling out to a split days before the French Open. Djokovic said he "couldn't get more" out of the partnership that only lasted six months, and that for the moment, he did not need a coach.

"I'm not in a hurry to choose," Djokovic said in Geneva where he is playing ahead of the French Open desperate for form, "or to know if I'll have someone else by my side or not. I don't know."

And that, as the man who turned 38 on Thursday tries to navigate through a "different chapter of my life", is what appears different this time to the past coaching shake-ups by Djokovic. He seems a bit unsure, searching for answers from a coaching lens at this stage of his career that, evidently, he couldn't get out of Murray.