Tennis: Novak Djokovic

Chapter 1. The reasons why

My theory, it's simple. I hate Djokovic, but it's oddly like loving him.

You see when you love someone the thought of that person in your head gives you butterflies and twists your stomach. It's the same for hating someone, you feel sick, every interaction with them makes your heart pulsate rapidly. You feel like your being eaten alive, it's scary.

But both love and hate — no matter which state you are in, you have to win! Trust me, it's the same for every game. I should know, I've been playing this game for months.

1st December 2021
It's an early Monday morning, ten past seven to be precise. I'm on the tennis court, training as I always do six days a week. Don't get me wrong it would be my picture of heaven, except the most annoying man on the entire planet arrives late. AGAIN! I swear he is the Devil's second hand man, brought purely into this world to annoy the living daylights out of me. His voice scrapes away at my ears, it is pure torture, imprisonment that's meant to last a lifetime.

We usually play a simple yet effective game with each other. The silence game. Yes okay it may be classed as childish and immature, but I take pleasure in the fact that I don't have to talk to him for the long training sessions.

Yet today was different, he was jollier than usual, singing Christmas songs as he entered the training court.

I'm going to introduce myself: My name is Y/N Walker, I'm nineteen, and I won the 2021 Australian Open. I unfortunately train with the twenty year old Novak Djokovic, who won the mens Australian Open and American Open in 2021.

At the start of 2021 the odds of the little known Y/N Walker winning the Australian Open was a thousand to one. The nerves were high within my training camp, I wanted to win, what was stopping me? Well, I needed a training partner, and not having one was surely going to set my year off wrong. It was a struggle trying to find someone. Fortunately we did, unfortunately it was Novak. We struck a deal. He was too start training with me immediately, we could both apparently help each other out, I'm rather good at helping people, him maybe not so much, but we digress.

We set a schedule to follow, I like schedules, every morning Monday to Saturday we meet at ten past seven on the training court to start a long day of training.
Here is the schedule:
- Ten past seven to eight o'clock, stretching and conditioning.
- Eight o'clock to eleven thirty tennis practice.
- Eleven thirty to one o'clock dinner.
- One o'clock to half past one warm up and stretch.
- Half past one to six o'clock more tennis practice including techniques.
And repeat. Sunday is different, that is reserved for the gym.

Novak sometimes brings the more childish game of copycat out, copying everything I do, tucking my hair behind my ears, check. Putting a ball up my skirt, check! Sun cream, check! The list goes on. He finds it hilarious, quite frankly I don't agree.

My reasons for hating Novak Djokovic are abundant:
Number one — He is ALWAYS late to tennis practice, may this be to annoy me, possibly so. Hilarious.
Number two — He is ALAWYS smiling, he never stops, it's kinda freaky. Just because I've smiled at you once doesn't mean I want to ever do it again.
Number three and probably the most important reason — He is actually an okay tennis player, and a nice guy. But we are NOT friends, that's too complicated.