Djokovic on his "emotional burst" at Wimbledon and dance with Serena
After losing the second tiebreak of Sunday's Wimbledon match, Novak Djokovic ripped off his shirt and began yelling after slamming his tennis racket against his shoe. Djokovic eventually came back to win the match, but said, "You don't want to know what I was saying to myself."
"I had an emotional burst and that's what happens in such a high level. You tend to go through certain emotions, ups and downs, but it's important to bounce back, to recover," Djokovic said Monday on "CBS This Morning." "If there's one thing that tennis has taught me over the years, is to get back on track and to leave whatever happened behind me."
Frustration turned to celebration two sets later when the top-ranked Serb won his third Wimbledon title and ninth Grand Slam championship.
Just as he did after winning his first title in 2011 and again last year, Djokovic proudly plucked some grass from Centre Court and put it his mouth.
In a repeat of last year's final, won by Djokovic in five sets, Djokovic moved past that anger-inducing loss of seven set points in the second set and pulled away to beat seven-time champion Roger Federer 7-6 (1), 6-7 (10), 6-4, 6-3.
It was a match that could have gone either way after the second set, but Djokovic said the rain delay helped him.
"Boris, my coach, got in a small room where we were waiting to be called back onto the court and we had a small chat," Djokovic said. "We kept things simple and, you know, just focused on certain things I needed to do better and after that I felt like I played really well."
Djokovic crushed Federer's hopes of winning a record-setting eighth Wimbledon title, and also set a record after the match.
Djokovic and Ladies' champion Serena Williams revived a tradition not observed in decades. Although champions were previously expected to dance together at, what is now called the Champions Dinner, according to Wimbledon, that stopped when the celebration was moved to a different day.
"So we thought we want to give a little rebirth to this tradition and hopefully any other next champion will do the same," Djokovic said. "I was actually thinking it's going to be a slower tune, something like a waltz, something more sophisticated, but she wanted to move so she chose 'Night Fever' and you can imagine how that went."
Off the court, Djokovic is husband to Jelena Ristić and father to 9-mont-old son, Stefan. Djokovic said the day he claimed victory was also his one-year marriage anniversary.
"I'm going to try to now nurture every moment that I find myself as a husband and a father because as soon as I'm off the tennis courts, when I get back home, I'm not a tennis player, I'm a husband and a father," he said. "It's just a completely different chapter in my life that also obviously helped me to play better tennis."
Sunday's event was the 40th career matchup between Djokovic and Federer. Djokovic closed out the match by breaking Federer for the second time in the fourth set, hitting an inside-out forehand winner into the open court on the final point.
"It was kind of a déjà vu of the last year's final where it was two sets to one up and trying to close out the match at fourth, but he came back and showed his competitive spirit and (fought) his way through fifth," Djokovic said.