CBS News
Covering Novak Djokovic’s rise to the top of men’s tennis | 60 Minutes
This week, 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim profiled Novak Djokovic, the tennis legend who recently won a gold medal in the men’s singles event at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France.
Djokovic won three of the four majors tennis tournaments last year, bringing his total Grand Slam wins to 24 and surpassing the records of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, who have won 22 and 20, respectively. Incredibly, Djokovic accomplished this record-breaking feat at 36 years old, an age that he never imagined reaching in the sport. Now 37, Djokovic will try to win his 25th major title at the U.S. Open, which begins Monday in New York.
Wertheim told 60 Minutes Overtime that Djokovic’s dominance in men’s tennis is far from over.
“The guy won three of the four majors, and he came within a couple points of winning all four of them,” he explained. “Could he play four more years, five more years? Absolutely.”
Wertheim revisited his coverage of Djokovic’s rise to the top of men’s tennis as a writer for Sports Illustrated, discussed the importance of mental strength in Djokovic’s game and looked back at Djokovic’s first appearance on 60 Minutes in 2012.
Djokovic and Wertheim first crossed paths in 2006 at the French Open, when Djokovic was just 19. In a 2007 article for Sports Illustrated called “Not Yet, Novak,” Wertheim expressed some skepticism that Djokovic would disrupt the Federer-Nadal rivalry that had existed in men’s tennis for so long.
“There’s a sense—even in the locker room—that this is a future champion,” he wrote. “But let’s hold off before saying he’s cracked the Federer-Nadal axis.”
“Nobody said, ‘Oh, this guy’s going to win 24 majors and counting, and reset all the records and surpass Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal who preceded him,'” Wertheim explained.
That all changed in 2008, when Djokovic won his first Grand Slam tournament, beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final match to win the Australian Open.
“We all sort of said, ‘Ah, maybe this is going to be a three-way race now,'” Wertheim said.
But cracking that Federer-Nadal axis would take a few more years. Djokovic told Wertheim in his interview that he often felt intimidated when playing against them.
And then in 2011, Djokovic achieved what Wertheim called one of the “all-time great seasons in tennis history.” He won three of the four majors tournaments that year, defeating Federer and Nadal in several high-pressure matches.
“I think a lot of it was mental and confidence,” Wertheim said. “And what he told me was that he was no longer intimidated by those guys.”
At the end of that spectacular season, 60 Minutes producer Draggan Mihailovich and 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon traveled to Belgrade, Serbia to interview Djokovic, who was then 24.
Simon asked Djokovic how he felt knowing that this might be the high point of his career. Djokovic confidently replied that he would be in tennis for many years to come.
“I don’t have my limit when I want to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to play up to that age and then I’ll stop,'” he told Simon.
Simon asked Djokovic how long the average career of a professional tennis player is. Djokovic guessed that it was “usually around 30 or 32.”
“Novak Djokovic did not imagine that at age 36, he would not only still be playing but would be playing at a level commensurate with 2011, and still winning three majors of the four majors, and still finishing the year ranked number one,” Wertheim said.
Wertheim asked Djokovic, then 36, who would win in a match against the 24-year-old Djokovic.
“I think the 36 would win,” Djokovic said. “I was slightly faster 10 years ago. But I think I’m probably able to play smarter today. And I’m also able to cope with the pressure moments better than I did ten years ago.”
Wertheim said Djokovic’s mental strength is a critical factor to his dominance in the sport, and it’s something he has developed with age.
“It’s very hard to pull statistics on this, but the guy on the other side of the net sure knows it,” he said. “He’s the best mental player I think in the history of men’s tennis.”
Wertheim said “constitution, confidence and self-belief” have given Djokovic an edge in the high-pressure moments of intense matches.
Djokovic said his mental game is not a gift: it’s something that has to be worked on over time. Techniques like conscious breathing help him manage stress on the court. He also took up journaling a few years ago.
“I try to write on paper with a pen as much as I can,” Djokovic said. “You’re emotionally cleansing…spending some quality time with yourself, with your thoughts. I think it serves you well.”
Wertheim asked Djokovic when he thought it would be time to retire.
“Once the young guys start kicking my butt, then I’ll probably, you know, start to rethink and question whether I should keep going,” he said. “But for now, it’s all good.”
The video above was originally published on December 10, 2023. It was produced and edited by Will Croxton.
It’s been said the best meals come from the heart, not from a recipe book. But at this USDA kitchen, there’s no pinch of this, dash of that, no dollops or smidgens of anything. Here, nutritionists in white coats painstakingly measure every single ingredient, down to the tenth of a gram.
Sheryn Stover is expected to eat every crumb of her pizza; any tiny morsels she does miss go back to the kitchen, where they’re scrutinized like evidence of some dietary crime.
Stover (or participant #8180, as she’s known) is one of some 10,000 volunteers enrolled in a $170 million nutrition study run by the National Institutes of Health. “At 78, not many people get to do studies that are going to affect a great amount of people, and I thought this was a great opportunity to do that,” she said.
CBS News
It’s called the Nutrition for Precision Health Study. “When I tell people about the study, the reaction usually is, ‘Oh, that’s so cool, can I do it?'” said coordinator Holly Nicastro.
She explained just what “precise” precisely means: “Precision nutrition means tailoring nutrition or dietary guidance to the individual.”
The government has long offered guidelines to help us eat better. In the 1940s we had the “Basic 7.” In the ’50s, the “Basic 4.” We’ve had the “Food Wheel,” the “Food Pyramid,” and currently, “My Plate.”
CBS News
They’re all well-intentioned, except they’re all based on averages – what works best for most people, most of the time. But according to Nicastro, there is no one best way to eat. “We know from virtually every nutrition study ever conducted, we have inner individual variability,” she said. “That means we have some people that are going to respond, and some people that aren’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all.”
The study’s participants, like Stover, are all being drawn from another NIH study program called All Of Us, a massive undertaking to create a database of at least a million people who are volunteering everything from their electronic health records to their DNA. It was from that All of Us research that Stover discovered she has the gene that makes some foods taste bitter, which could explain why she ate more of one kind of food than another.
Professor Sai Das, who oversees the study at Tufts University, says the goal of precision nutrition is to drill down even deeper into those individual differences. “We’re moving away from just saying everybody go do this, to being able to say, ‘Okay, if you have X, Y and Z characteristics, then you’re more likely to respond to a diet, and somebody else that has A, B and C characteristics will be responding to the diet differently,'” Das said.
It’s a big commitment for Stover, who is one of 150 people being paid to live at a handful of test sites around the country for six weeks – two weeks at a time. It’s so precise she can’t even go for a walk without a dietary chaperone. “Well, you could stop and buy candy … God forbid, you can’t do that!” she laughed.
While she’s here, everything from her resting metabolic rate, her body fat percentage, her bone mineral content, even the microbes in her gut (digested by a machine that essentially is a smart toilet paper reading device) are being analyzed for how hers may differ from someone else’s.
Nicastro said, “We really think that what’s going on in your poop is going to tell us a lot of information about your health and how you respond to food.”
CBS News
Stover says she doesn’t mind, except for the odd sounds the machine makes. While she is a live-in participant, thousands of others are participating from their homes, where electronic wearables track all kinds of health data, including special glasses that record everything they eat, activated when someone starts chewing. Artificial intelligence can then be used to determine not only which foods the person is eating, but how many calories are consumed.
This study is expected to be wrapped up by 2027, and because of it, we may indeed know not only to eat more fruits and vegetables, but what combination of foods is really best for us. The question that even Holly Nicastro can’t answer is, will we listen? “You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make them drink,” she said. “We can tailor the interventions all day. But one hypothesis I have is that if the guidance is tailored to the individual, it’s going to make that individual more likely to follow it, because this is for me, this was designed for me.”
For more info:
Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Ed Givnish.
“Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.