The unlikely GOAT-whisperer Premium

Goran Ivanisevic has managed the transition from maverick box-office attraction to astute coaching mind with surprising ease and considerable success

Of all the big stars who dominated the tennis world and popular culture in the 1990s, Goran Ivanisevic was the one you would have least expected to become a successful, full-time coach. 

A volatile, racquet-smashing maverick with a thunderbolt serve, Ivanisevic could both toy with the best and turn into a sputtering mess — often in the same match. This penchant for soaring one moment and crashing and burning the next made him a box-office attraction. 

Just to be clear, he was an accomplished tennis player. A former World No. 2, he won the 2001 Wimbledon championship in one of sport’s most heart-warming fairy-tale runs. 

But the ‘Crazy Croat’, as he was known, was perceived as a natural, mercurial talent — usually not the type, after retirement, to choose the coaching route, which requires patient man-management, painstaking attention to detail and a stomach for the grind of touring life.

And yet Ivanisevic has had a flourishing coaching career since starting in 2013. 

He was in Novak Djokovic’s corner in Turin when the 35-year-old claimed a record-equalling sixth ATP Finals title after a seven-year gap. Having joined forces in 2019 — at a time when the Serb’s invincibility cloak had slipped — the Djokovic-Ivanisevic partnership has realised six Major triumphs (three at Wimbledon, two at the Australian Open, one at Roland Garros) in 11 attempts.

Arguably as impressive, or perhaps even more, was Ivanisevic’s role in compatriot Marin Cilic breaking through at the 2014 US Open. Cilic, who became only the second Croatian man after his then coach to win a Grand Slam, did it at a time when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic had won 31 of the 35 preceding Majors.