MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic won some of his 24 Grand Slams without playing his best tennis. When his level wasn’t quite where it needed to be, his body would step up to outlast and outmaneuver his opponents.
Before he became the Novak Djokovic he is now — men’s Grand Slam title record-holder and the longest-lasting member of the ‘Big Three’ — he was in a very different situation. His level was comparable to that of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, but his body kept letting him down.
He retired against Nadal at the 2006 French Open; he did the same thing against the same opponent in the Wimbledon semifinals a year later. His ailments became so notorious that Andy Roddick mocked him in a withering attack ahead of their U.S. Open quarterfinal in 2008, suggesting that some of his injuries were not genuine.
Roddick listed ailments including: “bird flu… Anthrax. SARS. Common cough and cold” when asked about Djokovic’s injuries. Federer also criticized Djokovic after his retirement against Roddick at the 2009 Australian Open, saying: “It’s happened before, he’s not the guy who’s never given up before, so that’s kind of disappointing to see.”
Sixteen years later and now aged 37, Djokovic appears to have come full circle. His level is there, but his body is failing him.
On Friday at the Australian Open, a physically compromised Djokovic was able to go toe-to-toe with the world No. 2 Alexander Zverev for 81 minutes of their semifinal, only losing a gruelling first set when he missed a sitter volley on top of the net down 5-6 in a tiebreak. Djokovic immediately retired, shaking hands with Zverev and waving to the crowd as he left the court.
Djokovic was even able to beat the reigning French Open and Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz in Tuesday’s quarterfinal despite tearing a muscle in his left leg towards the end of the first set. This same issue forced him to retire against Zverev, underlining the miraculousness of that win on Tuesday as well as the gulf between playing on adrenaline and painkillers and actually recovering from an acute muscle injury.
He had performed a similar miracle at the French Open last June, beating Francisco Cerundolo in five sets despite tearing the medial meniscus in his right knee midway through the match. He had surgery after the tournament and reached the Wimbledon final less than six weeks later.
Neither miracle had a happy ending. He withdrew from the French Open before his next match against Casper Ruud; at Wimbledon, Carlos Alcaraz took advantage of his limited movement and blew him off the court in a 6-2, 6-2, 7-6(4) win where the scoreboard flattered Djokovic.
These results, two retirements and an injury-influenced thrashing, account for three of Djokovic’s last four Grand Slams; he also exited the 2024 U.S. Open in a shock defeat to Alexei Popyrin in which his flexibility and durability were fleeting rather than fundamental.
Djokovic is now in a compromised catch-22: he has the level to win the four five-set majors he actually cares about, but the physicality to win the three-set events that make up the bulk of the ATP Tour and about which he largely does not care. It’s a cruel coda for someone who got so used to pulling off barely believable Houdini acts, especially here in Melbourne, where he won the title with muscle tears in 2021 and 2023.
Novak Djokovic’s body could not sustain a Grand Slam semifinal this time. (Yuichi Yamazaki / AFP via Getty Images)
In Jannik Sinner and Alcaraz, Djokovic also has two proper rivals who can outmatch him on the court. Both smoked him in Grand Slam matches last year, before Djokovic beat Alcaraz in (two) straight sets in the Olympic gold-medal match and then defeated him again here Tuesday.
In an individual contest, especially over three sets, he is still a match for them both. But Grand Slams are not about individual wins. They are an exercise in accumulation and endurance, in which players have to beat one and sometimes two or three of their strongest rivals while ensuring they don’t expend too much energy in earning the opportunity to do so.
Djokovic, who has mastered the art of winning the first four rounds of a major with as little trouble as possible over his career, is the greatest exponent of Grand Slam pacing the sport has ever seen. At the 2019 Australian Open, he lost two games in the quarterfinal against Kei Nishikori, who had to retire in the second set, and then beat Lucas Pouille for the loss of four games to reach the final. A year later, when the 2020 final went to a fifth set, it was Djokovic, not Dominic Thiem, who was able to dig deep and find something extra.
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Five years on, the passage of time has done what is inevitable, leaving Djokovic limping out of majors having made a career out of being one of the ultimate endurance tests in men’s tennis. In his news conference after retiring against Zverev, he admitted that the “statistics are against him” in terms of the frequency of his recent injuries.
“It’s not like I’m worrying approaching every Grand Slam now whether I’m going to get injured,” he said. “It is true that (I’ve been) getting injured quite a bit in the last few years. I don’t know what exactly is the reason for that. Maybe several different factors.”
The most obvious factor is his age. The endurance of Serena Williams, Nadal and Federer has remade what constitutes the end of a tennis career, but even Djokovic’s superhuman peers had stopped winning majors at the age he is now. Federer won his last slam at 36 in 2018. Nadal won the 2022 French Open two days after turning that same age, but did so with an entirely numbed foot and has not been close to being a factor in a major since. Andy Murray, Djokovic’s coach here in Melbourne, won the last of his three majors at 29 and made his last second-week appearance just after turning 30.
“It’s unfortunate if the body’s not responding in the way that you would like,” Murray said to a small group of reporters Friday.
Despite this, Djokovic is not done.
“I’ll keep striving to win more slams. And as long as I feel that I want to put up with all of this, I’ll be around,” he said.
If the opening and closing chapters of Djokovic’s career do prove symmetrical, his career will still be remembered for the 13 years and record-breaking number of majors that came in between, when either his body, mind or otherworldly talents would compensate for any temporary deficiencies.
As he finds himself hamstrung by his own flesh, the future of his quest for more of the biggest titles in the sport is more uncertain than it has ever been.
(Top photo: Andy Cheung / Getty Images)
