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PARIS – With a Grand Slam singles title in his 19th career, Novak Djokovic is aiming for more tennis achievements unreservedly.
There are no complexes. Don’t play it cold.
“I’ve achieved some things that a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be possible for me to achieve,” he said on Sunday after winning his second French Open.
The odds had been stacked against him since the beginning of his journey. His family were ski racers, not tennis players, and he lacked the means to fund his career without major sacrifices. He grew up in Serbia in a time of conflict, when Serbia was an international pariah and traveling outside the country was a challenge.
He’s still leaving home – for the first time at age 12 – and has found a way to the top of a brutally competitive world sport. And perhaps most strikingly, he endured at the very top.
He reached number one for the first time on July 4, 2011. After nearly 10 years, he is on another extended reign at number one and watching him think on his feet (or fly through the air with his floppy limbs) is the observation of a tennis genius. His match is not as smooth and shrewd as Roger Federer. His tenacity at every point is not as evident as Rafael Nadal’s. But it’s the complete package, with no weaknesses other than sporadically shaky overhead. He has become the sport’s toughest opponent, and while watching him fend off great dangers and deficits, it’s easy to forget that he was once considered a player without staying in power, prone to retiring mid-match.
Now, he’s the one in everyone else’s head, and that can be helpful as he’s striving, at the same time, to set the men’s record for Grand Slam singles titles and so-called gold championships.
After winning in Paris, he is just one major singles title behind Federer and Nadal 20. But the chase that will generate the most buzz is Djokovic’s attempt at age 34 to win all four major singles titles and an Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year.
“He’s so amazingly cool that it wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s a perfect game in progress, so it’s hard to talk about,” said Brad Gilbert, coach and ESPN analyst, using a baseball analogy.
Stevie Graf is the only player to have completed the Golden Slam. But Djokovic now has a chance to run his own career after winning the Australian Open and the French Open this year.
Wimbledon, which kicks off June 28 in London, will be the next target. It will follow the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the US Open in New York.
“Anything is possible,” Djokovic said. “And I put myself in a good position to win the Golden Slam, but I was in that position in 2016 as well. He ended up losing the third round at Wimbledon.”
That defeat was a shock. When Wimbledon started in 2016, Djokovic won four consecutive Grand Slams, albeit not in the same calendar year, and had just won the French Open for the first time. But he faced Sam Querrey in the third round at the All England Club. Querrey, a tall, big-serving American who grows on grass, upset him in a two-day game due to a delayed rain.
“If Novak isn’t the best return ever, he’s on the very short list,” Querrey’s coach Craig Boynton at the time said in an interview on Monday. “But from the start of that match, he couldn’t read Sam’s serve, and Sam was hitting line after line.”
Querrey won the first set in the tiebreak and then went through the second set before play was suspended due to darkness. As this year’s French Open has proven once again, Djokovic is skilled at using off-court breaks to alter the course of a match. In front of Querrey, he did the same, coming back after a night of sleep to win the third set but then failed to serve the fourth set. Crowd a queer to finish it. Djokovic then went into a meltdown that he didn’t get out of until the spring of 2018.
Djokovic after beating Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2019, credit… Nick Bothma/EPA, via Shutterstock
Tennis is still a momentum game. If Djokovic defends his 2019 title at Wimbledon – last year’s tournament was canceled – and loses at the Olympics, he will still have a chance at a Grand Slam ahead of the US Open. Only two men have achieved the four grand slams in singles: Don Badge of the United States in 1938, and Rod Laver of Australia in 1962 and 1969.
No man has come close since, although Serena Williams was two games away from achieving it in 2015 before upsetting her US Open semi-final against Roberta Vinci.
“It gets more and more exciting as it develops,” Boynton said of the Grand Slams. “I saw what happened with Serena. She’s human. We’re all human, and so is Novak. I think he’ll be able to handle it, but you never know. You never know what the stumbling block is around the corner. Novak makes it look easy at Right now, but I’m telling you, it’s not that easy.”
In fact, Djokovic hasn’t made it look easy for the past two months. He lost early in Monte Carlo and in his first two tournaments in Belgrade, then worked his way up in two tough matches before losing to Nadal in the Italian Open final. After winning his second championship in Belgrade against a low-grade stadium, he came to Paris feeling better about his game but still had to overcome the two-set deficit twice at Roland Garros and also had to play one of the matches of his life to defeat Nadal in the four-set semi-finals.
There was also a long cry he made after his quarter-final win over Matteo Berrettini that spoke a lot about his state of inner peace. But Djokovic can change his mood as quickly as he changes directions on the tennis court. He learned how to turn negativity into positive, and imagine that when fans chant Federer or the name of some other opponent, they’re actually chanting ‘Novak’.
On Sunday, in the final against Stefanos Tsitsipas, Djokovic got pockets of support but the majority of the 5,000 fans were attracting the newcomer. Djokovic is still reigning, draining some of the suspense from his comeback from two sets by climbing up to an early breakout in all three final sets.
Djokovic gave a kid who encouraged and trained him a hug and his racket after the final at Roland Garros. Credit… Pete Kehardt for The New York Times
When it was over, he went to the side of the field and talked to a boy in the front row, hugged him and gave him the racket he used to finish the victory.
“It was in my ear basically the whole match, especially when I was in two sets to love it,” Djokovic explained when I asked him about it. “He was giving me tactics too. He was like, ‘Hold your serve, get an easy first ball, then dictate, and go for the backhand.’ He was literally coaching me. I found that really nice, really cute.”
Leave it to Djokovic, an expert at blocking out consonants and focusing on the primary, to hear one of the few voices in a big wishing crowd.
This skill could come in handy as he chases down history.
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