Novak Djokovic celebrates a win

Novak Djokovic will make his return to competitive tennis early in the 2025 season with the tennis great confirming he “will play” a warm-up tournament before next year’s Australian Open.

The 24-time Grand Slam winner has not featured on the ATP Tour since finishing runner-up to Jannik Sinner at the Shanghai Masters in October as he opted to skip last week’s Paris Masters as well as the season-ending AT Finals, which gets underway on Sunday.

Furthermore, Djokovic has also made it clear that he plans to play only the “big” events in future with the four Grand Slams and Davis Cup finals his biggest priority as he admitted “I don’t have any long-term plans. I live in the moment and I’ll see what happens”.

There had been speculation that he could skip the tournaments before the 2025 Australian Open and head straight to Melbourne Park for the season-opening major.

However, the former world No 1 has now confirmed that he will play before the first Grand Slam of the year, although the tournament is yet to be decided.

“I will play in the first week of the season, I haven’t decided where exactly yet,” he told Sport Klub.

He added: “Tennis is still in focus – now we are going to go full throttle during off-season preparations, we go for another ride. I just needed to freshen up a bit after an exhausting year.”

Djokovic kicked off his 2024 tennis campaign at the United Cup with Serbia, but his country won’t feature in the 2025 edition. Back in 2023, he played at the Adelaide International 1 the first week of the season.

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The other tournaments taking place during the first week of the new campaign are the Hong Kong Open and the Brisbane International while the Adelaide International and Auckland Open will run from January 6-12.

The top players, though, often don’t play the final week before a major as they prefer to hit the practice courts.

Besides the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open, Djokovic wants to continue representing Serbia at the Davis Cup.

The first round of qualifiers will take place straight after the Australian Open with Serbia one of the seeded teams. Victory during the home and away tie will see them qualify for the second round that will be staged in September.

“Slams, of course, and I would also like to play the Davis Cup, we’ll see what happens with that,” he said.