Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray at the Australian Open

The tennis world was stunned when Novak Djokovic revealed he hired Andy Murray as his new coach for the 2025 season, but the move appears to have had a big impact in one key area of his game.

Djokovic is chasing 100th career title in what may be his final year on the tour, with a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title also in his sights before he calls time on his remarkable career.

Murray’s presence in his coaching box seems to have lifted his levels of desire and the Scot may also have had an impact on his former rival’s serve.

After years of competing against each other at the highest levels of the game, Djokovic and Murray are now working in tandem and one statistic stands out when comparing this Djokovic year to others.

His first serve percentage for 2025 is a highly impressive 69 per-cent and this is a big step forward from the numbers he was producing when he was at his best and playing against Murray in Grand Slam finals.

Djokovic was in stunning form in 2011 as he won three Grand Slam titles and dominated the men’s game, but his first serve percentage for that season was down at 65 per-cent.

Then in 2016, when he also won three Grand Slam titles, his first serve percentage was also at 65 per-cent.

His service percentage was at 65 per-cent when he won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon in 2021 and at 64 per-cent when he won three Grand Slams two years ago.

While we are only a third of the way through the season, Djokovic’s impressive serving displays at the Australian Open and last month’s Miami Open have bumped his number of 2025 up to the highest it has been in his career.

A five per-cent leap in service statistics may not seem hugely significant, but that would be the equivalent of a sprinter knocking a quarter of a second off personal best in the 100m or a soccer player adding five goals a season to his total.

At the top end of sport, fine margins are all important and the impressive numbers don’t end there for Djokovic on his serve.

In the 203 service games he has played, he has won a massive 76 per-cent of the first points on his serve and 89 per-cent of his service games.

They are impressive numbers for a player who will celebrate his 38th birthday next month, with Djokovic admitting he has surprised himself with the quality of his serving his season.

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“I wouldn’t say particularly we paid so much attention to the serve prior to this tournament that it needed to be worked on separately from all the other shots in order to get it to a desired level,” said Djokovic after his win against Grigor Dimitrov in the Miami Open semi-finals.

“I think I’ve been serving pretty well this year. Maybe some other elements in my game haven’t been working particularly well, but the serve was solid.

“I mean, this is a whole different level of serving, obviously. I mean, I did not expect myself to top the serving performance of last match, where I had 83%, and I had 87% today. I missed I think five or six serves in the whole match. So that’s really amazing, amazing standard, really high standard.

“I wouldn’t say particularly we paid so much attention to the serve prior to this tournament that it needed to be worked on separately from all the other shots in order to get it to a desired level,” said Djokovic.

“I think I’ve been serving pretty well this year. Maybe some other elements in my game haven’t been working particularly well, but the serve was solid.

“I mean, this is a whole different level of serving, obviously. I mean, I did not expect myself to top the serving performance of the last match, where I had 83%, and I had 87% against Dimitrov. I missed I think five or six serves in the whole match. So that’s really amazing, amazing standard, really high standard.”

It will be fascinating to see if Djokovic can continue this pattern of impressive serving and if he can, a player widely recognised as the greatest returner of serve the game has seen will be a big threat to challenge for glory at the French Open and Wimbledon in the next few months.

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