Novak Djokovic -- Far More than the Greatest Tennis Player

The sports giant who refused the shot

I am writing this just a few hours before Novak Djokovic steps out on Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest tennis arena in the world, to compete in the first round at the US. Open.

Djokovic at 38 is aiming for his record-breaking 25th Grand Slam victory, taking his first step against Learner Tien, a young Vietnamese American literally half his age at 19.

It’s Arthur Ashe at night, the most dramatic and raucous event in tennis.

This promises to be an unusually competitive first rounder because Tien is a comer who has already beaten several top ten players, including former Grand Slam winner Daniel Medvedev and current world number 3 Alexander Zverev.

Many fear, myself included, that this could be Novak’s swan song, the end of a career that began decades ago when he came seemingly out of nowhere (Serbia) to challenge the two historic kingpins of tennis—Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal.

He was reviled for this. How dare he? In those days I was among the minority that rooted for Nole, as he was called, to win this extraordinary tripartite competition.. That might have been because of my often reflexively oppositional personality or because I enjoyed Novak’s sense of humor. He could do dead-on imitations of other tennis players from Nadal to Maria Sharapova.

In the meantime he won more major tournaments and spent more weeks as number one in the world than any male in the history of a solo sport often compared in intensity to a non-violent version of boxing. No one can spell you in tennis. Like it or not, you’re IT in the game Robin Williams called “chess at ninety miles an hour” as you struggle to make it through five sets than can last as long as five hours.

Today it’s a very different story for Djokovic. At the end of his career, Novak has become a hero of our times. This rather amusing video of him being followed down Fifth Avenue by hundreds of adoring fans has been going viral. Djokovic is on the way to Manhattan’s Lacoste store that is debuting Djokovic branded tennis gear in which, for the first time, the French company is replacing their signature alligator logo with a GOAT logo in honor of Nole.

Pricey as it is, I intend to pick one up, not just because Djokovic is the greatest tennis player of all time, arguably also the greatest athlete, but because the man has transcended sport and become one of the most remarkable figures on the planet, not just for his highly-disciplined diet that few of us could adhere to. (He also speaks around six languages.)

I am referring, of course, to the COVID years. Then, at the height of his career, Djokovic forewent grand slam tournaments because he refused to take the mRNA vaccines. Most notoriously and embarrassingly, he was unceremoniously sent home from Australia, his most successful Slam, by a seemingly quasi-dictatorial regime. (That that nation now seems overcome with antisemitism is not entirely unrelated.)

No one knows how many Slams Joker would have won had he taken the shots like a good boy and shut up, but it is likely more than the 24 he already has.

At The Free Press, Uri Berliner writes about this period in “I Hated Novak Djokovic. Now I’m Rooting for Him.” Obviously, Mr. Berliner and I do not see eye-to-eye because I never did the former. In fact, it was because of his stand on COVID, that I appreciated Novak more than ever. He stood up for those of us who smelled a global fraud that smacked of health totalitarianism.

It wasn’t all that difficult then to sense that something was rotten with Dr. Fauci et al and that such theories as the pandemic might have started at the Wuhan lab (not with some strange animal) and that gain-of-function research might have been involved were well worth considering.

Nevertheless, to be honest, I wasn’t so rigorous as Djokovic. I took the first two shots (nothing after). I was working for The Epoch Times then and traveling a lot. I thought—it turned out incorrectly— I wouldn’t be allowed on planes if not vaccinated. When I quit the ET because they started censoring me (as they did others, some of whom also left), I regretted my vaccinations.

Novak himself arguably took his protest too far, staging an unmasked player party during a tournament in Serbia at which several of his athlete colleagues contracted the disease, although it didn’t appear to last very long for them, more like a flu.

Djokovic, like the rest of us, has his flaws, but in his case he seems to work on self-improvement as if his character and his tennis game were one. As for where Nole stands now, try his pre-Open press conference of which one commenter wrote: “Not only the greatest tennis player of all time, but the most articulate and thoughtful speaker, too. He’s turned press conferences into an art form.” Most of the other commenters agreed.

I realize I am sounding very much like a hero-worshipper and that’s not a good look. So I’m going to stop here and wait for the Tien-Djokovic match. Yes, I will be rooting for Novak but what follows will be, I hope, an unvarnished commentary. Hard as it is even for me to believe, I have been playing tennis myself at a mediocre/amateurish level for now over 70 years. (I’m not banking on much improvement at this point. I’m just thankful I can stand on a court without collapsing.) But amidst multiple careers, I’ve always had a hankering to be a tennis journalist. This is my opportunity.

In that regard, my guess is this first round match will be Djokovic’s biggest test until he meets up with today’s stars Jannik Sinner and/or Carlos Alcaraz. Novak comes into the Tien match without having played competitively since Wimbledon. This is a huge opportunity for the young man to make a name for himself with very little to lose.

By the way, a paper I believe gives the best play-by-play tennis reporting is one whose political analysis I view as (to use one of the biggest words I know) antedeluvian—The Guardian.

AS IT HAPPENED

The first set looked like a master class. Tien may have troubled some of the other lions of the game, but not Djokovic. He went down 6-1 in 24 minutes. It seemed over before it started.

Except it wasn’t. Suddenly—was it an infusion of cockiness on Novak’s part or Learner learning—all of a sudden it was game on. Tien his some nifty inside out forehands that painted the line. Djokovic seemed out of sorts…and very much 38 years old (plenty young to me but geriatric for pro tennis).. Moreover, something was wrong with his body… again. He had folded in the Wimbledon semis against Sinner for a medical reason. What was hobbling him now? The trainer had been called but could not appear until after the set according to the rules.

So we would have a tie-break. Normally that’s Novak time. He goes into lockdown mode and almost always wins them. But I was worried. He looked old and tired and basically shot. The end was nigh.

But it wasn’t. He won the breaker 7-3 and cruised in the third set 6-2. It could have been another 6-1, known in tennis lingo as sticks, but his mind wandered again.

More importantly for what may be his last crusade for a 25th major, what was wrong with his body? It turned out be a left toe blister that looked in a close up pretty ugly, to say the least. It’s a wonder he could walk, but the trainer handled it.

On to round two. Before Djokovic gets too full of himself, I would like to remind him of this man, a Sikh, who just became the first centenarian to complete a marathon. Something to shoot for Novak. Wimbledon at 64? The Beatles, AI version, might do a song about it. “Will you still need my backhand when I’m….” (Oh, shut up, Simon.)