{"id":60076,"date":"2026-01-18T00:55:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=60076"},"modified":"2026-01-18T01:02:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T22:02:05","slug":"djokovic-says-addiction-to-tennis-keeps-him-going-at-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/18\/djokovic-says-addiction-to-tennis-keeps-him-going-at-38\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic Says ‘Addiction’ to Tennis Keeps him Going at 38"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic said Saturday he still gets a “drug-like” adrenaline rush from tennis and is not thinking about retiring anytime soon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 38-year-old is about to embark on his 21st Australian Open and remains among the top contenders, behind defending champion Jannik Sinner and top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melbourne Park is his favorite hunting ground, claiming 10 titles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite scaling back his tournament appearances in recent years the Serbian great remains confident he can still compete with the best and is not ready to leave the sport behind.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“I’m still living my dream to be honest,” the former world number one said on the eve of the opening Grand Slam of the year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s passion and love for the game. It’s the interaction with people. It’s the energy that you feel when you walk out on the court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“That adrenaline rush, it’s almost like a drug.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“I think that a lot of the top athletes from different sports can relate to that. I have been at least hearing them speak about that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s so addictive, you know, the feeling of competing.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

His long-time rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have both hung up their racquets and Djokovic said he constantly got asked about when he would join them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“I have been asked a lot about obviously when is the end date going to come for me, but I don’t want to talk or think about it yet because I’m here, I’m competing,” AFP quoted him as saying.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“When that arrives and kind of becomes ripe in my head, I’ll share it with you, and then we can all discuss on the farewell tour.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“But right now I’m still number four in the world, still competing at the highest level, and I feel like there is no need to draw the attention to that discussion.”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic said Saturday he still gets a “drug-like” adrenaline rush from tennis and is not thinking about retiring anytime soon. The 38-year-old is about to embark on his 21st Australian Open and remains among the top contenders, behind defending champion Jannik Sinner and top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz. Melbourne Park is his favorite hunting ground, claiming …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60078,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60076\/revisions\/60078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}