I'm still trying to stop laughing at this one. While it's fairly common knowledge that players sometimes just paint the name of a new sponsor on equipment from another company, it's probably not good form for the player to announce it publicly along with the announcement of a new deal, as Novak Djokovic did here.
From Novak Djokovic's official site:
When he was arrived at Belgrade's airport yesterday, Novak Djokovic had new bags in his lugguage. Head's mark on Novak's racquets is changed with big "W".
The agreement with Wilson company was attained few days ago in Monte Carlo, and Novak will play with new racquets already in Perth from 31st December.
"Roger Federer and me," Novak laughed on comment about club in which he entered. "People from Wilson company tried to make agreement with me for five years and they "catch me" now finally. I don't know the specification of our agreement, because we didn't ratify that still, but I know it's much better convention then I had with Head. I tried to play with 15-20 different models of Wilson and no one is conform to me. Then they made a copy of my Head racquet, and he is absolutely the same."
"No Jok" is more than a bit off. For some reason he doesn't when stop talking like when he proclaimed that he used all of his timeouts to his advantage during his US Open epic with Monfils.
It's a bit late but Happy Holidays to you!
Thanks a bunch for continuing to update your site.
Posted by: Shawn | December 27, 2005 at 09:07 AM
Funny - when he was honest after the Monfils debacle I appreciated it. Hopefully that's going to force tennis to enforce the injury rule more strictly this year.
But it's a little different when you out your sponsor rather than yourself.
Thanks for the holiday wishes. Vacation week from work this week so time on my hands:) We'll see how it goes with the site.
Posted by: lisen | December 27, 2005 at 10:00 AM