The season of sport is well underway. The Olympics have started, football didn’t come home, and we all know what happened at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The country of tennis is organizing yet another international tournament – Belgrade Ladies Open. The donation of balls and the public practice announced the tournament in the best possible way.

Our founder Novak Djokovic is someone who lives his dream but also wants to inspire others to believe in themselves and their own dreams, follow them and fight for them. However, in most situations, dreams and wishes are not sufficient to succeed, because they must be supported by parents, teachers, and coaches, and all others that genuinely care about children at a young age. This donation of tennis balls will allow children all over Serbia to train and play in better conditions because sport at this age should be precisely that – play.

“We at the Novak Djokovic Foundation, and within our program Path of a Champion, are very proud and happy to donate kids’ tennis balls to clubs in Serbia who are actively working on the popularization of the sport. With their dedicated work, they confirm time and again that they are on the right path of a champion that leads to success through play. The enlargement of this donation to clubs in the neighboring countries encompasses Novak’s personal beliefs and values that sport connects people, overcomes differences, and transcends boundaries – while uniting them into one winning team on all world meridians, whether they are in our part of the world or, like Novak at the moment – in Tokyo!” – said Ana Jovanović, manager and author of the program Path of a Champion, and a former international of Serbia’s Fed Cup team.

You might be wondering what were our future champions doing during public practice. Well, they were jumping, collecting balls, running through drills, practiced forehand and backhand”¦ some may have tripped on clay or dirtied their clothes, so what? What matters is that we had fun and made new friends! Under the watchful eye of Kaća, Robi, Dragan, and other coaches at Novak Tennis Center, children from Kragujevac, Šid, Valjevo, and other cities trained and went home overjoyed.

 “It’s important for children to take up sports at the age of five in order to better understand teamwork and healthy competition. Up until they are ten, it’s essential that, through play, they experience as many sports as possible. Today we practiced on two courts divided into four drills. We developed kids’ motor skills and coordination, and we also explained different ways of movement on a tennis court. Kids learned contact, forehand and backhand. Some clubs from Serbia got new balls which is very important in their further development as it will give them an opportunity to practice according to the Tennis 10s standards.” – observed Katarina Vranić – Kaća, one of the wonderful coaches at Novak Tennis Center.

When asked what they liked best during practice, kids provided interesting answers: Vera, Lena, Nadja, and Misha fancied drills and running, whereas Andrea, Ray, Sasha, Moma, Andrej, and Andreja preferred hitting balls and perfecting their forehand and backhand. Tara, Luka, and Janko, our little diplomats, said that there was nothing that they didn’t like and that everything was super!

Why, thank you, lads and lassies, that’s what we like to hear!

Now, what are their dreams and what would they like to be when they grow up? Well, Ray is determined to become a tennis player, Andrea will be an actress, while Andreja will become a waiter! Wow, how cool is that!

For all our future athletes, pilots, seafarers, and astronauts who are paving their path of a champion, Novak Djokovic Foundation is actively working on providing valuable support to everyone in the children’s environment who wishes them well, just like us.

Novak’s sincere wish is to bring closer together and unite all people through sport while making it more accessible and affordable to a growing number of children. This donation of tennis balls does not end here, as it is about to continue in the neighboring countries as well.

Thank you for supporting our mission. Keep following the kids and the balls on their path of a champion!

The post From THE Champion to Future Champions: Novak Djokovic Foundation Continues to Encourage Children to Play Sports appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

The season of sport is well underway. The Olympics have started, football didn’t come home, and we all know what happened at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The country of tennis is organizing yet another international tournament – Belgrade Ladies Open. The donation of balls and the public practice announced the tournament in the best possible way.

Our founder Novak Djokovic is someone who lives his dream but also wants to inspire others to believe in themselves and their own dreams, follow them and fight for them. However, in most situations, dreams and wishes are not sufficient to succeed, because they must be supported by parents, teachers, and coaches, and all others that genuinely care about children at a young age. This donation of tennis balls will allow children all over Serbia to train and play in better conditions because sport at this age should be precisely that – play.

“We at the Novak Djokovic Foundation, and within our program Path of a Champion, are very proud and happy to donate kids’ tennis balls to clubs in Serbia who are actively working on the popularization of the sport. With their dedicated work, they confirm time and again that they are on the right path of a champion that leads to success through play. The enlargement of this donation to clubs in the neighboring countries encompasses Novak’s personal beliefs and values that sport connects people, overcomes differences, and transcends boundaries – while uniting them into one winning team on all world meridians, whether they are in our part of the world or, like Novak at the moment – in Tokyo!” – said Ana Jovanović, manager and author of the program Path of a Champion, and a former international of Serbia’s Fed Cup team.

You might be wondering what were our future champions doing during public practice. Well, they were jumping, collecting balls, running through drills, practiced forehand and backhand”¦ some may have tripped on clay or dirtied their clothes, so what? What matters is that we had fun and made new friends! Under the watchful eye of Kaća, Robi, Dragan, and other coaches at Novak Tennis Center, children from Kragujevac, Šid, Valjevo, and other cities trained and went home overjoyed.

 “It’s important for children to take up sports at the age of five in order to better understand teamwork and healthy competition. Up until they are ten, it’s essential that, through play, they experience as many sports as possible. Today we practiced on two courts divided into four drills. We developed kids’ motor skills and coordination, and we also explained different ways of movement on a tennis court. Kids learned contact, forehand and backhand. Some clubs from Serbia got new balls which is very important in their further development as it will give them an opportunity to practice according to the Tennis 10s standards.” – observed Katarina Vranić – Kaća, one of the wonderful coaches at Novak Tennis Center.

When asked what they liked best during practice, kids provided interesting answers: Vera, Lena, Nadja, and Misha fancied drills and running, whereas Andrea, Ray, Sasha, Moma, Andrej, and Andreja preferred hitting balls and perfecting their forehand and backhand. Tara, Luka, and Janko, our little diplomats, said that there was nothing that they didn’t like and that everything was super!

Why, thank you, lads and lassies, that’s what we like to hear!

Now, what are their dreams and what would they like to be when they grow up? Well, Ray is determined to become a tennis player, Andrea will be an actress, while Andreja will become a waiter! Wow, how cool is that!

For all our future athletes, pilots, seafarers, and astronauts who are paving their path of a champion, Novak Djokovic Foundation is actively working on providing valuable support to everyone in the children’s environment who wishes them well, just like us.

Novak’s sincere wish is to bring closer together and unite all people through sport while making it more accessible and affordable to a growing number of children. This donation of tennis balls does not end here, as it is about to continue in the neighboring countries as well.

Thank you for supporting our mission. Keep following the kids and the balls on their path of a champion!

The post From THE Champion to Future Champions: Novak Djokovic Foundation Continues to Encourage Children to Play Sports appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

From the moment Harrison Saladini picked up a racquet, the passion for tennis was clear.    On more than one occasion, he has described the court as a place where he feels free and completely at peace.  This may seem counterintuitive considering the enormous pressures youngsters face not only on their bodies but also on every moment of their time.

To me, tennis is a driving force, a channel for emotion, an underlying quest for excellence that demands just a little more each and every day and settles for nothing less than the very best you can be.  There is no cover and there are no excuses, it is combat where only one will survive.  Most importantly, it is a community of other players and coaches who share this ideology, says Harrison.

Harrison practices five-days a week and has tournaments  most holidays and weekends.  Given it is a year-round sport, there is very little down-time  for a 12-year-old.  Yet, he greets each day with the same determination and enthusiasm for his training and academics as the day before.

Since the very first day, I knew  that tennis was no ordinary sport and that the challenges would be many but the rewards most worthwhile. Tennis not only has kept me in optimal physical condition, it has sharpened my focus and heightened my emotional and mental acuity.  In so doing, I have learned many valuable lessons such as the tremendous power of composure, persistence even for seemingly unachievable tasks, the setting of short and long term goals, and an unyielding work ethic, he explains.

Harrison has very high aspirations both academically and athletically and takes his responsibilities very seriously.He has earned many academic awards such as The National Social Studies Award three years in a row including a perfect score in 2008 as well as recognition for outstanding achievement on a multitude of National exams.  He has also earned recognition for his tremendous integrity and honesty including academic honor and kindness awards as well as a good sportsmanship award at the USTA National tournament this past August. To hone his creative skills, he studied theater and voice since the age of five and had the great honor of being one of five children chosen to sing in the 2012 Kenny Rogers Christmas concert.

As a Mensan since the age of five and lifetime inductee to Intertel, 14-hour days are typical and working hard on and off the court is a daily reality.  As a result, Harrison says he  has  learned to be  impeccably organized and self-motivated.  By making the very best use of his time, he has not only learned to be highly efficient but, to never take a single minute for granted.

Tennis has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice and to appreciate not only my success but to learn from my setbacks. Whether I hit a winner or ace a test, the court has led me to the very best I can be,  he says.

Young  Harrison Saladini trains with  his coach and mentor Sergei Igel who not only trains and instructs him but also imparts invaluable wisdom.

As an inspiration, my coach regularly idealizes my role model, Novak Djokovic, who embodies the very essence of a champion not only athletically but, as a person. Novak is a  tremendous example not only as an athlete but as a person of the highest integrity. Tennis is at its very best when it is being enjoyed not only by the players but by all who embrace the sport and  Novak, always brings a smile to the court!

The post In the Spotlight: Young Tennis Talent, Harrison Saladini appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

For spectators in the 1960s, Rod Laver’s strokes on the tennis court were a thing of beauty to behold. The stroke he had while being interviewed by ESPN in 1998 was not.

When Laver lost control of his thoughts, collapsed and vomited mid-sentence, the interviewer understood what was happening inside Laver’s brain, and immediately called for an ambulance.

As soon as Laver was able to speak in his Los Angeles intensive care unit, he told his doctor, “I used to be a fairly good tennis player.” His right side paralysed, his speech mostly nonsensical and his brain still bleeding, the only man who ever won the Grand Slam twice was told his days of playing for enjoyment were finished for good.

Yet on 8 January 2014 he strode out onto Rod Laver Arena dressed to vie with his prime rival for the title of greatest of all time; albeit in old-style tennis clothes that paled against the vibrant colours of his opponent’s Nike gear. When a man who has suffered a stroke can get back out on the tennis court, he knows he has recovered well. But when he gets back out on a tennis court named after him, in a sold-out stadium with additional hundreds of thousands watching live on TV, and sees Roger Federer at the other end of the court, he must know he is the “Rocket” Rod Laver.

Laver’s cracking left hander was travelling better than his once-useless right side on this $1m fundraising “Night with Roger Federer and Friends”; though not much better, thanks to his arthritic left wrist. But every time he made contact with the ball, the crowd cheered a little louder. It did not matter where the ball went.

Laver, Pat Rafter said in 1998, was “the last person you’d expect to have a stroke”. It would have been unthinkable at the apex of Laver’s career that he would ever boast in his diary, as the crowning achievement of a 24 hour period, “I walked today”. But if Laver was once tennis’ greatest role model for youth, he now seemed intent on using his experience of mind-numbingly slow rehabilitation to become the equivalent role model for senior citizens. He taught us an important lesson – [tweet_quote]You’re never too old to inspire.[/tweet_quote]

Following the years of tongue-tied aphasia, in 2014, Laver spoke up as a supporter of the Roger Federer Foundation, as the Global Ambassador for the Australian Open, and as the face of Medibank’s #generationbetter. He urged elderly Australians to get out of the house and have a go; whatever their sport, whatever their age, whatever their health.

Standing between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Federer on 8 January 2014, Laver looked markedly less imposing than he did as the redhaired lefty from outback Queensland. For once, it was neither Laver’s athleticism, nor his dominance, that the crowd was applauding, because both had faded; however, his courage in flying back to Australia to publicly hit up with one of the world’s best, given the circumstances – in his post-stroke 70s, just a year after the death of his wife.

Why would a former star choose to put his waning skills under the bright lights of Rod Laver Arena? To show that he now stands for something more than just ‘former star’ – survivor, conqueror of adversity, and elder statesman of tennis.

The post Rod Laver’s Message to the World appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

• Your research in Claritas Mindsciences (formerly goBlue labs) combines mindfulness training with 21st century technology in order to help people improve their life and work. What is the underlying logic of the science of self-mastery?

It is pretty straight forward. Notice what it is like to get out of your own way, see how this helps you make fewer mistakes, perform better, and recover faster when you do, and repeat. Paying attention mindfully is the first part -it helps us see what it is like to trip ourselves up, and developing technological tools that can provide a mental mirror so we can see what this is like in our brains is the second part. We learn best by feedback.[tweet_quote] If you hit the ball into the net, you learn how to stop doing that by paying attention to how you hit the ball. [/tweet_quote] We can also learn how to be mindful, but the feedback we get here is more subjective, and can be skewed or even downright hijacked by our egos, because we often don’t want to see where we are not doing well, and would rather tell ourselves that we are performing ok rather than paying attention and seeing that we aren’t.

Some of the neuroimaging work we’ve done at Yale found a brain region that gets deactivated during effortless awareness. This is interesting, because it is the same region that gets activated when we do all sorts of self-referential processes, including getting anxious, craving something or even thinking about ourselves. Because it gets more activated with these things, basically when we get caught up in our own experience, and gets deactivated when we are being effortlessly aware, it is a perfect substrate for using as a neurofeedback tool. We are developing an EEG neurofeedback device that can give people feedback from this specific brain region (not just from the scalp like EEG feedback devices that are available today), so they can directly link up their own subjective experience with their brain activity. No more ego getting in the way and telling us that we are doing a good job of getting out of our own way; just direct feedback. The theory is that this will help people really notice what it feels like to be effortlessly aware, so they can tap into that more and more.

• You are developing novel neurofeedback technique to measure and train meditative “flow” states. What we can learn from athletes and what are the key elements of a peak performance?

In basketball, we miss the moment to pass the ball to a teammate because we are caught up in trying to score ourselves. [tweet_quote]In tennis we can’t shake off that last shot that we hit long or into the net, and as a result, make another mistake[/tweet_quote], and then start beating ourselves up more. And so the spiral begins . I think some of the key elements are 1) learning proper technique and 2) learning how to continually stay in the moment when we are performing or in competition. Good athletes do both of these -they go and practice carefully. [tweet_quote]They don’t just put in the hours, but they pay attention when they are practicing so they keep learning and optimize their performance.[/tweet_quote]   As Vince Lombardi puts it, “perfect practice.” How many golf balls does Tiger Woods hit a day when practicing? How much does he pay attention during each hit? The second bit about staying in the moment can be fostered by mindfulness practice –when we see how painful it is not to be present, we start to learn more and more to be present, because it doesn’t get much better than this.

• In your recent TEDx talk you observe how we are lucky if we get into a flow state a few times in life. However, athletes seem to be able to tap into it more frequently. From your experience, what do you think makes a difference and how we can increase our ability to tap into our “inner athlete”?

This is where the curiosity and joy come in. [tweet_quote]When someone is really playing a great game of tennis, not only are they having fun, but the whole crowd is -because their joy is contagious.[/tweet_quote] When we are truly curious, and let go in each moment, we are right back in the game no matter how horribly the last shot went. And who doesn’t want to be in on the fun? The more joyful the game, the easier it is to shake off a bad shot, so these feed on each other -letting go is joyful, which feeds back to more letting go

• Many people get paralyzed by fear of failure or even so, the fear of success. In your lectures and talks you regularly point out we that we should     become aware that fear is just made up of body sensations, sensations that we can choose to act on or not as long as we can be aware of them. What exactly is an “ability to choose” and how to avoid being sucked in reactive behaviors?

It is less an ability to choose not to fail (because we all would choose not to fail), and more the ability to not be sucked into the black hole of reactive behavior. This is where the RAIN exercise can be helpful. The Noting helps us stay with each moment, see that fear is just made up of body sensations, and ride it out rather than being sucked into it. There is more on this in an article I wrote called “How to face fear”

• How Lolo Jones could have won the Olympic gold medal?

I talk about this in the TEDx talk, so it may be easiest to just watch that bit, but the short answer is that she literally got in her own way by getting caught up in thinking. She tripped herself up by telling herself to perform a certain way (which she was already doing a find job of). If she had just let her body go, and stay in the flow of things, she may have been fine. Who knows.

• Our lives have pretty much shifted online. From your experience at the Yale Therapeutic Clinic, what is the best model for a balanced, healthy life, how are we to live?

This is not an easy question, nor do I have a one-line answer! But I will quote Mary Oliver:[tweet_quote]”Instructions for living a life: 1) Pay attention, 2) Be astonished, 3) Tell about it.”[/tweet_quote]

The post What Tennis Can Teach Us about Self-Mastery appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

To say that I love tennis is a major understatement. A good friend of mine likes to joke and say, “I saw you on campus today. Well, I saw what looked like a walking tennis bag and knew it was you”. You see, I am rather short and a tennis bag could look life-sized next to me.

In the sport I have found a meaningful and balanced way to be competitive, stay active and healthy, and learn many lessons in life. I strongly believe that tennis is one of the greatest metaphors of life. You train in the shadows with no one to watch but a coach or team, but when you play a match in public, you play it as an individual competing with your opponent for victory. An exceptional benefit of  the sport is getting to see my strengths and weaknesses, notice when I am being lazy, or whether there are abilities I simply have not been gifted with. But what I really get excited about, in tennis and in life, are the unexpected moments that show up in front of us to make us learn and grow. Life recently presented one of these opportunities to me on the tennis court, through a young kid named Joey.

Joey is an approximately 3-foot 5-inch 8 year old boy. He is shorter than other kids his age, and he is a little shy. The same way my tennis bag is almost bigger than I am his seemingly “life size” racquet seems like it should be a challenge for him to handle. While I and another player struggled to hit overhead lobs one practice, much to the annoyance of the coach, Joey stood off to the side watching. Finally fed up, the coach called him over and told Joey : “Show them how it’s done.” So he did.

Photo credit: Frédéric de Villamil / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Joey hit every ball fed to him and did it easily and with a strength that was unexpected from such a small fella. The coach looked at him proudly and then turned to us with a look that implied, “Do not let this little kid show you up.” I was both annoyed and afraid, a combination to be avoided. We resumed, but still, I did badly. When finally a break arrived, I walked up to Joey to acknowledge he had a great potential and to keep up the good work. He looked up at me and said:

You are good too, in your own way. You can get to shots many others can’t. Never give up.

He smiled and headed off to play.

What Joey taught me was that we are never too young to acknowledge and encourage others. The power of his words has inspired me to do it despite the fear in many walks of life and not just in tennis. When facing an exam or an interview where fear has tried to paralyze me, Joey’s acknowledgment and words of encouragement have often come back to me and helped me do it despite being afraid.  More importantly, he has inspired and motivated me to always acknowledge and encourage others, no matter how young or old in their age.

Leo S.

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