Djokovic on Sinner - Similarities, Yes, but also Differences

06/07/2025 12:22

The Grand Slam king talks Sinner at Wimbledon. 

By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday July 6, 2025

There’s been much talk about similarities between the games of Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner, with the Italian happy to admit that he has modeled much of his game after the 24-time major champion.



“I believe that he gave me a lot of information that I can make my game similar to his, but in my style,” Sinner said on the topic earlier this week.

Djokovic, who reached the round of 16 on Saturday with a win over Miomir Kecmanovic was asked to elaborate. “I think it's obvious in terms of I guess the style of play that we both have, that we have quite a bit of similarities,” Djokovic said. “We try to take the ball early, be aggressive, dominate the exchange from the baseline.”

Djokovic, 38, says he remembers Sinner as a junior and was immediately struck by parallels.

“I remember him as a really young kid, I think he was 13, 14 years old when I met him first and hit some balls with him,” he said. “Already at that point he was skinny and tall, kind of like myself. He's taller than me, but I was always quite skinny when I was younger. He was just ripping the ball. You could see that he had the really good timing, good speed on his strokes.”



The pair even use the same racquet. But they also do a lot of things differently. Djokovic plays with more nuance and variety, and mentally they are completely different in terms of demeanor.

“He uses the Head Speed racquet that I use, as well,” Djokovic said. “There's quite a few similarities. But he's unique in his own way. The work that he has done with his team over the last couple of years is tremendous in terms of his improvement. Really, serve, movement, accuracy.

“As much as everybody talks about the speed of his shots, the timing is incredible. I think he decreased the number of unforced errors he had maybe in the first few years of his career, and now he's just super accurate and constantly puts pressure on the opponent because he plays so fast.”