Must watch: Novak Djokovic visits war-ravaged tennis courts of his youth
The tales of a young Novak Djokovic are legendary in Serbia. As an 11-year-old junior player, Djokovic and his family would spend nights in the basement of his grandparent's apartment building to protect themselves from the start of the NATO bombings. When the sun came up, though, they'd inevitably venture out to practice, war be damned.
"It made us tougher," Djokovic once told 60 Minutes after taking Bob Simon on a tour of that apartment building. "It made us more hungry."
Djokovic recently returned to Serbia to visit those tennis courts, which were bombed out in that infamous military campaign. He posted the visit on Facebook Live and narrated the video - a touching, haunting look into the past of the world No. 1 and the greatest sports hero of his nation.
In it, Djokovic describes the wall he shows at the beginning of the clip.
"This is the wall that survived the bombing and survived many different hits. The holes that you see in the wall are the consequence of the bombs. It's unfortunate but on the other hand it's nice to see that the wall itself endured. This is where I had some of my first tennis hits."
