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Novak Djokovic’s 100 tennis singles titles: The places, the opponents, and the tournaments
Charlie Eccleshare
May 24, 2025Updated 1:45 pm EDT
What do you give the man who has everything? Another title, it turns out. Novak Djokovic created yet more tennis history on Saturday in Switzerland, by winning his 100th men’s singles title at the Geneva Open. Djokovic beat Hubert Hurkacz 5-7, 7-6(2), 7-6(2), before making the journey to Paris for the French Open.
Wherever he ended up celebrating, he won’t have found a more exclusive club than the one he now belongs to with Jimmy Connors and Roger Federer, the only two players to have reached the milestone in the Open Era of tennis, which began in 1968. Djokovic needs 10 more titles to overtake Connors at the very top, but just four more to move ahead of his great rival, the second player in the 2000s’ ‘Big Three,’ along with Rafael Nadal.
For Djokovic, who turned 38 the week of his title win, it’s yet another significant landmark in a spectacular career. He is already the male leader when it comes to Grand Slams won, with 24, and he ensured that he had won every significant title in the sport by winning Olympic gold at last year’s Paris Games. No other player has won all four of the majors, every ATP Masters 1,000 event (the next rung down), the end-of-year ATP Tour Finals for the best eight players that season, and an Olympic gold.
The Geneva Open is an ATP 250 event, the lowest rung of the main tour. Djokovic has had the most titles in the ATP 1,000 format, one rung below a Grand Slam, for some time, with Nadal having won 36 and Federer having won 28. He also leads in Tour Finals titles, with seven.
His proficiency by surface is similarly varied. It is widely accepted that Djokovic is the best hard-court player of the Open Era, especially indoors. He remains tied with Federer on 71 hard-court titles, still one away from setting yet another outright record for the Open Era. Djokovic also has a case for being the second-best clay-court player of the same era (after Nadal) and is in the highest echelons for grass, too.
For most of his career, he was playing nearly all of his finals against Federer, Nadal and Andy Murray, his former coach and the player who turned the ‘Big Three’ into a ‘Big Four’ between 2010 and 2017. Of his most frequent final opponents, only Stan Wawrinka can boast a winning record, of 3-2.
Djokovic’s most successful event is the Australian Open — where he has 10 titles — followed by Wimbledon, the ATP Finals and the Paris ATP Masters 1,000, all of which he’s won seven times.
Geographically, Djokovic’s 100 titles take in 19 countries. He has won three in his home country of Serbia, lifting the Serbian Open trophy in 2009 and 2011 and also capturing the 2021 Belgrade Open. That event was given a single-year license during the Covid-19 pandemic and was played at Djokovic’s Novak Tennis Centre.
Underlining the small margins at the top of men’s tennis and his ability to turn them in his favor, Djokovic faced a match point at some stage of the tournament in just nine of his 100 title wins. He most famously saved two championship points against Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final and he also saved two match points on the Federer serve during the 2011 U.S. Open semifinal, one of them with one of the most famous forehand returns of all time. He went on to beat Nadal in the final.
It took Djokovic just under five years to win his first 25 titles. The first came in July 2006, when he beat Nicolás Massú 7-6(5), 6-4 to win the Amersfoort ATP 250 event on clay in the Netherlands. He picked up number 25 in Rome at the 2011 Italian Open. The next 25 came a whole lot quicker, with Djokovic reaching a half-century by winning Indian Wells in March 2015 less than four years later, a shade under nine years after his first title.
The second 50 hasn’t come quite as quickly, with Sunday’s triumph coming almost exactly a decade after that Indian Wells success. Djokovic looked initially on course for a similar pace when he got to 75 titles at Wimbledon in 2019, a little over four years after winning his 50th, but he’s slowed down a touch since then. This last quarter-century has taken him a few months short of six years, and he won just one title last year, which was his lowest tally since he didn’t win any in 2005.
Djokovic’s most prolific years were 2015, when he won 11 titles, and 2011, when he won 10. In both of those years, he won three Grand Slams — as he did in 2021 and 2023, when, just as in 2015, he was only one win short of completing the Calendar Grand Slam, tennis’ holy grail.
Djokovic’s main aim is now that elusive 25th Grand Slam title. It would move him clear of Australian women’s player Margaret Court in the history books, with whom he jointly holds the record for Grand Slam singles titles in men’s and women’s tennis. Djokovic should also be able to beat Federer’s 103 titles and move to second on that particular leaderboard, but Connors’ 109 looks out of reach unless he plays well into his 40s.
Ahead of last year’s Shanghai Masters, Djokovic spoke of the “extra motivation” that potentially winning a 100th title provided. Now he’s ticked that off, focus shifts towards starting the second century at Roland Garros, where the Grand Slam record could potentially be his.
That’s the thing in tennis: there’s always some other prize to be chased, one last bucket list entry to tick off. Even for the man who seemingly has everything.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/623796 ... is-record/
