For once, maybe for the first time, Novak Djokovic didn’t have all the answers. Neither he nor we can truly know if he ever will again.
After retiring hurt after narrowly losing the first set of his Australian Open semi-final against Alexander Zverev, Djokovic could not say how long his torn hamstring would sideline him.
He could not say if he would be back for another tilt at the title he holds by adverse possession next year. The way he had been playing, he had fancied his chances this year, but he could not say if he could “put up with all of this” again. Putting up: His words.
A shattered Novak Djokovic after bowing out of the Australian Open.Credit: AP
He could not even say whether he would continue his celebrity coaching association with Andy Murray. Murray lost four finals here, all to Djokovic. Now you could say that Djokovic had cost him another as coach.
Djokovic was addressing questions dutifully and evenly, but through the fog of bitter disappointment, and it showed. For 20 years he has been able to answer nearly every question put to him on the court, but these questions were existential.
He could not say whether he would have tried to play on if he had won the first set. He had won this tournament twice before while playing injured, but this match had a long way to go, let alone another in two days. This one set had taken 80 gruelling minutes.
Unlike, say, Rafael Nadal, Djokovic is not one to play a match out to certain doom, risking exacerbation of the injury, so that his opponent is not seen to have had victory fall into his lap. He’s a warrior, but not a martyr.
Some of the crowd had a rude answer to Djokovic’s abrupt retirement. They booed him. Zverev had an impassioned retort to them. If the almost uniquely competitive Djokovic found it impossible to persevere, he said, then it was not possible.
He had a point. You cannot condemn Djokovic for bending all the rules to play on – and there was a bit more of it on court this day – and then accuse him of flaking. Really, the crowd was booing its own misfortune. For tickets costing hundreds of dollars, they thought they’d been short-changed.
“If you look at it that way, I understand,” Djokovic told Serbian media. “At least I’m trying to understand them. I don’t know if they understand me or wish to understand me.”
Djokovic’s relationship with the Melbourne crowd has always been complex and sometimes testy. Now both were taking an unwanted timeout.
At first, there was nothing questionable about what was prospectively a blockbuster of a semi. Djokovic had not had a hit since his quarter-final defeat of Carlos Alcaraz until an hour before this match, but this we only learnt subsequently.
Djokovic was not obviously incapacitated and Zverev did not sense a problem until they reached the tie-breaker. But there is a difference between being fit enough to play tennis and fit enough to play the No.2 seed in a semi over many hours.
The set they did play was strangely underwhelming. Djokovic sometimes storms these big matches, but he and Zverev duelled from the baseline, as if both were wary. As it happened, both had good cause.
It does not mean that there were not instances of sublime brilliance. Djokovic’s best was a classic drop shot/lob combo. Zverev is 198 centimetres tall, remember. And yet there was something lacking about the contest. It had quality, but not dynamism.
Zverev, though gifted, is not a naturally pretty player and Djokovic was not himself, landing his first serve at barely 20 per cent in the beginning, and so it seemed that this would be one of those days when it was necessary to win ugly. The best sportspeople all have to do it sometimes.
And then suddenly, with a hug at the net, it was over. Zverev was endearingly self-deprecating. “I played one of my best sets in the tournament, and I won it 7-5 in the tie-breaker while he was injured,” he said.
So Djokovic decamps from Melbourne one short of 100 Australian Open wins, one short of 100 tour titles, and still one short of a record 25 majors. Those numbers read like runes.
There is an answer about Djokovic’s predicament, and it’s age-old. It’s called old age. Djokovic is already older than any man or woman to have won a major, and by the time the next one comes around at Roland-Garros, he will have clocked up another year.
No man can have been more zealous about bodily preservation than him, to the point of asceticism. He has been seen to perform miracles, at least on himself. But in two of the past four majors, he has had to retire because of injury.
True, between then and now, he has made a Wimbledon final and won an Olympic gold medal. But the Olympic field was smaller than for a major, and was best of three sets, and he was thrashed in the Wimbledon decider.
The point is that, even for Novak Djokovic, it will only get harder from here. Serena Williams’ pursuit of a record-equalling 24th major became a kind of holy crusade, and ultimately failed. Djokovic’s mission to win a record-breaking 25th major has lent that number an almost mystical dimension, like the four-minute mile once.
That doesn’t mean he won’t win it, but it does mean it would be the hardest won of them all.
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