Novak Djokovic Brings Much-Needed Comedy to Tennis

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Novak Djokovic has it all. He's the No. 1 tennis player in the world, he's won four Grand Slam singles titles and he's earned over $30 million on tour (per ESPN.com).

And yes, Djoker has a hot girlfriend. He's been dating Jelena Ristic since 2005, and their relationship appears from afar to be rock-solid.

How solid is it, you ask?

Well, it's saying something that Djoker was able to post this picture to Twitter and get away with it without getting slapped:

Two things to note here. The first is that this is indeed a picture of Jelena. The second is that she doesn't actually look like that.

The story, according to Yahoo! Sports, is that Djoker took this picture before his fourth-round match against Lleyton Hewitt at the Australian Open, and then he distorted it using some app or another. The picture wasn't going to go public, but Jim Courier made Djoker spill the beans in his post-match interview.

The photo ended up on Twitter a few hours later, much to the amusement of Djoker's 500,000-plus followers.

That's pretty much the whole story. No harm, no foul. Just a bit of fun.

And fun, of course, is nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to Djoker. Nobody in the sport of tennis, in either the men's or the women's ranks, is more easygoing than he is. He manages to walk a fine line between taking his craft very seriously while at the same time keeping things loose. It is not uncommon for him to have some fun out on the court, and he always keeps things light in his interviews.

Djoker (an apt nickname) is not the first eccentric player in tennis history, and you can rest assured he won't be the last. But right now, he kinda stands alone. We occasionally hear other players crack jokes, but nobody cracks jokes with the regularity of Djokovic.

Of course, it helps that Djokovic is constantly in a position to be cracking jokes. It's easy for him to be upbeat and loose because he's always winning. There aren't any other players out there who are winning as often as he is, and the amount of losers at a given tournament far outweighs the amount of winners. Dozens go into a tournament, but only one man and one woman can win. That means there will be two happy people at the end of it all, and a whole bunch of unhappy people.

So yeah, asking every tennis player in the business to have a fun-and-games attitude at all times is asking a bit much.

If nothing else, that's a reason to be thankful for Djoker. He always has fun, and he always has fun because he can.