Novak Djokovic rightfully slams British tennis fans over outbursts

Novak Djokovic has never been afraid to help bring the noise from the audience. He oftentimes will put his fingers to his ear when he knows the crowd is against him and after he hits a winning shot. He doesn’t mind the hate, but what he really doesn’t like is the disrespect. And that goes for whether the fans are reacting to him or another player.

After Djokovicdefeated Cam Norrie in the Serbia-Great Britain Davis Cup tie, a match that propelled Serbia into the semifinals of the event, he was given an on-court interview when British fans kept banging a dream loudly as if to intentionally disrupt the interview. It was a classless act by the fans of the Great Britain team.

Their team lost. They got beat by another team with the best player ever. The fans just needed to deal with it as reacting with sour grapes is simply shallow and stupid. And Djokovic was having none of it.

Novak Djokovic tells British tennis fans to ‘shut up’

The Serb pointed out a group of British fans loudly chanting and beating their drum and told them, “Learn how to respect players, how to behave yourselves, learn how to respect people, you shut up, you be quiet.” He was right.

People cheering on their team during the event is one thing. That is what fans are supposed to do in an attempt to help their team feel more energized. But after the match, the fans just looked dumb. Novak Djokovic would have been just as correct to pull off his best Ferris Bueller and turned to the fans and said, “It’s over. Go home.”

It should be noted that after directing his comments toward the crowd, Djokovic did cool some. Maybe he realized he was the bigger man and the better player and his team was moving on while the Great Britain team was going home.

Perhaps Djokovic put it best, however, when he ended the interview. He summed up the fans’ obnoxiousness by saying, “At the end I was trying to talk and they were purposely starting to play the drums and they were trying to annoy me the entire match. So we had a little bit of a chat in the end.”