All hail Novak Djokovic, the greatest tennis player in all of history. (That was the po-faced bit. He is.)
But where does a man go once he is the greatest? This world is not enough. From here, you must also be the most Christ-like, the most sinned-against, the most aggrieved, the most heroic in overcoming injury, the trickiest, the fakest, the truest, the realest, the thinnest of skin and thickest of will, the greatest in every imaginable direction. Only one man matches Novak in all these respects and he is otherwise engaged, issuing executive orders from on high.
The great one has already changed tennis, making aspects of gamesmanship a regular part of the professional toolkit. Want to irritate your opponent into nervous collapse? Bounce that ball before serving, until… no, wait, there’s another few bounces. It’s killing them just to think about it.
The tennis tantrum pre-dated Novak and was much more extreme in the 1980s. But the tactical tantrum – that’s his intellectual property. It’s followed by the tactical celebration, the tactical condescension and the tactical post-match interview. You will love me! If it annoys the spectator, imagine what it has done to generations of tennis players.
The tactical injury and immaculate recovery, which Novak patented about ten years ago, is a miracle that would be better placed in the New Testament. On Tuesday night, when trailing in his quarter-final against Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, Novak was in such desperate, desperate pain from some kind of unspecified leg injury that he was thinking about quitting. In commentary, Jim Courier said it looked really bad. (See Courier, cut-and-paste, from 2023, 2022, back to the beginning of Novak time.) A bandage was wrapped around the offending thigh, with just enough showing below the hemline of the shorts so that everyone could see it.
The grimaces looked strangely familiar (see 2023, 2022, etc). It always looks really bad, yet somehow – somehow – once the pain-killing drugs have taken effect the one who begins to suffer is not Novak but the opponent. Alcaraz couldn’t cope, and why would he? He was up against divine intervention.
The tactical injury time-out is now a standard tactic. Others copy it, but there’s only one Novak.
Then there’s the influence on officials. Ten Australian Open titles earn you a certain gravitas. Unlike your rivals, you don’t have to be Moses during the days when Melbourne becomes an Egyptian desert. The tournament organisers say they consult with all players on scheduling; it’s just that Novak is the one whose wishes are their commands.
When Novak didn’t want to get a COVID vaccination before coming to Australia during the pandemic, he was told that to have recently contracted the virus would obviate the need for a shot. Miracle! At just the right moment, he caught Covid. Tennis Australia bent over backwards, forwards and sideways to smooth his path. The federal government had to adopt a legally specious reason to kick him out of the country, a process that humiliated all involved. Opportunely, it left Novak with another entry in his book of motivational feuds. Having defeated mere tennis players, he could now defeat a mere government.
Novak Djokovic celebrates after defeating Carlos Alcaraz on Wednesday night.Credit: AP
Freedom of speech is one of the issues Novak champions as a good Christian, but it has its limits, as the television journalist Tony Jones found out this week when he engaged in some fairly unfunny satire at the expense of Novak and his Serbian followers. On live television, Jones said, “I hope they don’t hear me”, a clue to satire so deft and subtle that Novak and his disciples missed it.
A social media pile-on, the commercial stakes as an employee of the host broadcaster, and the realisation that he had offended a cult of believers forced Jones to crawl back to kiss the hem of those shorts, or the bandage, or whatever. It didn’t matter. Another grievance, another powerful motivator. When all of tennis has submitted, why not bring a media partner to heel?
Who would have thought that someone who merely hits balls over a net could command such divine powers? Who would have thought a sportsperson could take themselves, and be taken, with such sacred seriousness? But there is the rookie error: Novak occupies a singular apex where domination of a game never quite fills that hole. Admiration for his tennis can never be enough. All you want to do is watch someone run around doing amazing things with their body and a ball, but you soon find that you are also required to venerate, love and obey.
Irreverence! Heresy! Human rights violation! Drop! Duck! Cover!
