“At the same time, when I reflect on everything that I’ve been through with these guys, I’m grateful because they made me the player that I am today,” he said. “They made me stronger both mentally, physically. My game was improved because of all these matches that we played again each other mostly because of the matches that I lost to them, some big matches.”
Despite playing catch-up to Federer and Nadal’s rivalry earlier in his career, Djokovic has now surpassed them to hold multiple records. The Serb is currently tied with Nadal on the men’s singles record of 22 Grand Slam titles and recently surpassed Steffi Graf to hold the most all-time weeks at world No 1 with 380.