Novak Djokovic started his day picturing how it might finish, holding his youngsters in his arms, elevating one other Grand Slam match trophy above his head and singing his nationwide anthem as Serbian followers chanted and danced and celebrated his third French Open males’s singles title and far more.
On Sunday at Roland Garros, Djokovic defeated Casper Ruud, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5, to seize a file twenty third Grand Slam singles title, persevering with a shocking turnaround from a yr and a half in the past, when he was deported from Australia forward of the primary Grand Slam match of 2022, a dire harbinger of the yr to return. After Ruud’s remaining forehand sailed off the court docket, Djokovic dropped his racket and collapsed onto his again on the pink clay. It was straightforward to understand the drama.
“The toughest one for me to win,” Djokovic stated of the French Open.
Moments later, after a congratulatory hug from Ruud, Djokovic knelt in prayer in the midst of the court docket, then headed for the stands to embrace his household and his coaches. When he got here again onto the court docket moments later, he was carrying a jacket with “23” emblazoned below his proper shoulder.
Djokovic, 36, has spent a lot of the final 20 years chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two different giants who’ve outlined this period of recent tennis. That race has come to an finish, a minimum of for now.
“Those two guys, the past 15 years, were occupying my mind quite a lot,” Djokovic stated as he sat subsequent to the championship trophy.
Djokovic surpassed Federer final summer season, just some months earlier than Federer’s retirement, successful his twenty first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on the grass that Federer had dominated for therefore lengthy. In January on the Australian Open, Djokovic received once more. That twenty second title tied Nadal, the Spanish champion who missed this yr’s French Open with an damage.
With a solid of stars available for the event, he made his historical past on the pink clay of the Philippe Chatrier court docket on the French Open, which Nadal has received an astonishing 14 occasions. A silver statue of Nadal bullwhipping his forehand stands simply a whole lot of yards away.
The retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady sat subsequent to Djokovic’s spouse, Jelena. The French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a number of rows above the court docket. The American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the tennis icons Stan Smith and Yannick Noah, and lots of French actors, singers, businessmen and athletes have been additionally among the many spectators.
This was a momentous step in a journey stuffed with self-inflicted crises, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the court docket, and early and midcareer fallow seasons, some as a result of he was injured and a few when he missed tournaments as a result of he wouldn’t waiver from ideas that saved him a staunch opponent of the Covid-19 vaccination. His most seemingly unattainable process has been successful the hearts of tennis followers who way back pledged them to the primary two members of the so-called Big Three.
At the top of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 years outdated and 5 years previous competing in his first main match, Federer had already received 16 Grand Slam titles to Djokovic’s one.
But in 2011, Djokovic started to storm the game, successful the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon. He put collectively a 41-match successful streak and a 10-1 file in opposition to Federer and Nadal. Tennis has by no means been the identical.
Maybe it was his new, gluten-free weight loss plan, or forsaking alcohol, or the time spent in a pressurized chamber. Maybe it was the stretching and calisthenics routine that turned Djokovic right into a racket-wielding rubber band and has him “still moving like a cat,” as his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, stated Sunday night.
The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder, which Djokovic has stated he has carried since rising up throughout the struggle in Serbia, hasn’t damage both.
Ivanisevic, a Croat, has described a Balkan combating spirit in Djokovic’s DNA that nobody who has come from outdoors the area can match within the greatest matches.
Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for 3 years, has stated that Djokovic wanted to cease punishing himself for an indiscretion that neither Djokovic nor Becker has ever talked about intimately. Once he did that, Becker stated, he grew to become liberated, and started successful with abandon.
The numbers since then defy easy clarification. With his win Sunday, Djokovic regained the world’s high rating for a file 388th week. In addition to the file for Grand Slam match titles, he additionally holds the file for Masters 1000 titles. In case any Nadal or Federer followers need to fault him for being a mere compiler, Djokovic has a successful file in opposition to each of them.
Feeling worn out from his semifinal win over Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic skipped observe on Saturday and looked for tranquillity on a stroll within the woods. It was a superb resolution.
Any hope that Ruud, 24, a gentle and decided Norwegian taking part in in his third Grand Slam remaining in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into one thing apart from a coronation dissipated on the finish of a grinding first set that concluded in Djokovic’s signature vogue. Across all these years and a whole lot of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has misplaced solely 5 occasions after successful the primary set.
Andy Roddick, a former world No. 1, famously stated of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”
Ivanisevic added to that evaluation Sunday: “Then he digs your grave and you have a funeral and you’re dead. Bye-bye. Thank you for coming.”
That was about what Djokovic did to Ruud early on Sunday, on his approach to historical past.
Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to start out the match and surged to an early lead as Djokovic performed a shaky first few video games, muffing overheads and pushing balls off the court docket as Ruud performed the largely error-free and deceptively harmful tennis that has characterised the most effective moments of his profession.
But then the Djokovic that the tennis world has come to know and worry the previous dozen years emerged. With Ruud serving at 4-2, shut sufficient to smell the first-set end line, Djokovic indulged in a kind of basic grinding rallies, working from nook to nook, ahead and again, protecting the purpose alive lengthy after it ought to have been over. It ended the best way it usually does — with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the online.
“A bit devastating,” Ruud stated.
In most tennis matches, when a set strikes to a tiebreaker, the end result comes all the way down to a flip of a coin. That is just not the way it works with Djokovic.
Last week, he defined that when a tiebreaker begins, his thoughts strikes to a state of hyper focus to “stay in the present,” play every level on its benefit and provides nothing away.
He began this one with a lunging forehand winner down the road, and completed it seven factors later with one other blasted forehand that Ruud didn’t even trouble making a run at, not that it might have mattered. When it was over, Djokovic had performed 55 factors in tiebreakers throughout this match and had but to make an unforced error.
For an hour and 22 minutes, Ruud had gone toe to toe with Djokovic, matching him dash for dash and shot for shot for lengthy stretches, and he had nothing however a rubbery set of legs and a broken psyche to point out for it. Ruud caught round for the scrap, pushing the match previous the three-hour mark. But after that first set, it was only a matter of time.
In the fog of all this successful, it may be tough to recollect Djokovic’s stretches of strife, even the more moderen ones. There have been these days when he was in custody in Australia final yr as he awaited his deportation listening to. But there was additionally that ugly time in 2020, when he by chance swatted a ball into the throat of a line decide and was tossed out of the U.S. Open. The subsequent month, Nadal destroyed him in straight units within the remaining of a French Open delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Djokovic appeared headed for one more stroll within the wilderness.
Instead, he got here inside one match of reaching a Grand Slam, practically successful all 4 Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, toppling Nadal at Roland Garros alongside the best way.
He has received the primary two Grand Slam occasions this yr.
“The journey is still not over,” Djokovic stated. “If I am winning Slams, why even think about ending the career?”
He could also be alone with 23 Grand Slam titles, however in his eyes, there’s extra historical past to play for.
Source: www.nytimes.com