The journey gets difficult for Djokovic
LONDON— He was the eternal jester, making mock-face from under the halo of a winner’s glow, genially impersonating rivals.
Novak Djokovic came naturally to the pantomime and self-effacing humour that earned him a marquee moniker: The Djoker.
Even if, sometimes, not everybody warmed to the juvenile japery. Despite his open nature, an obvious yearning for the public’s embrace, Djokovic has been rather unloved by the tennis masses, nor revered for the extraordinary string of Grand Slam successes. There’s been precious little idolizing, as enjoyed by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, for a player who spent 223 weeks as world No. 1.
In a strange way, it’s taken drastic reversal of fortune for the not-longago monumentally dominant Serb to approach the realm of endearment.
Djokovic doesn’t laugh so much anymore. He isn’t so silly anymore. In the past year, he more often has appeared utterly bewildered by his sudden thumping fall from quasiimmortal to struggling human.
That tumble began here, at Wimbledon, where he arrived 12 months ago on top of the tennis world. He had just won Roland Garros, becoming the first man to concurrently hold the titles at all four Grand Slam events since Rod Laver in 1969. There’d been not a hint of vulnerability on the courts.
And then it came shockingly undone, an upset in the third round by bazooka-serving American Sam Querrey.
A freak occurrence, surely. Sometimes even a cat can look upon a king.
Except it wasn’t a one-off anomaly, as Djokovic staggered from upset to upset, including a second-round exit at the Australian Open.
In the aftermath, Djokovic has jettisoned just about everything that got him to the top of the mountain, from coach Boris Becker to his fitness trainer to his physiotherapist. As if the fault lay around him instead of inside him.
It’s been a kind of self-inflicted shock therapy. Most notably, Djokovic brought on board Andre Agassi in May. At Wimbledon, the everexpanding coaching platoon includes former world No. 7 Mario Ancic, now otherwise toiling as an investment banker with Credit Suisse.
“He’s someone I’ve known for many years,” Djokovic said of the Croat. “He was one of the players on the tour that I’ve had closest relationship with, even during the active career. We were competitors and rivals. But we also had a tremendous respect and support towards each other.
“We spent a lot of time off the court, we speak the same language. He beat me here, as well, I remember that, in a long four-setter.”
On the eve of Wimbledon, the attention has been focused primarily on Federer, Mr. Renaissance Man, and the resurgent Nadal. Djokovic, seeded fourth — and ranked fourth in the world — is viewed almost as a curiosity. Can he get back on the rails to collect his fourth Wimbledon title?
The 30-year-old has sought to mitigate his decline by emphasizing the importance of other areas in life, making oblique references in recent months to problems in his personal life that required a re-set.
Or, as Agassi put it during a promotional appearance, as reported in The Guardian: “When you see somebody who accomplished so much and then somehow to our eyes it overnight changes, it doesn’t have anything to do with tennis, it has to do with reason, inspiration, find that thing that fuels you. Your heart and mind is a bank account, you’ve got to give it more than you take out of it. When you cross that line you file for bankruptcy.”
Agassi can certainly relate to Djokovic’s turmoil, having fallen much further from his own No. 1 supremacy before rising Phoenix-like from the ashes to regain the No. 1 ranking.
Djokovic, for much of the past year, has seemed temperamentally out of sorts, uncharacteristically testy and, at times, looked frankly miserable on the court — like a stranger in a strange land.
A victory at Eastbourne on Saturday — the low-tier grass-court Wimbledon tune-up where he hadn’t appeared since 2010 — dispelled some of the gloom and put a smile on his face Sunday. “Obviously I was not playing too many of the events in the week prior to the beginning of the Grand Slams in my career. But I decided to go this time because I felt like I needed more matches in general, but especially on the grass, that’s very unique surface that requires time for adaptation and adjustment, especially for the movement.”
Makes sense. And boosts his selfconfidence, even though the field was thin. “People were very kind. It was a great week of positive energy.”
Asked what advice he would give if time-travelling back to his former self: “That’s probably a thing many people would love to do, go back in time and kind of influence certain events and certain things differently from your present, right? I guess patience, that’s something that lacks a lot to young people. For myself it was the same, kind of trust the process as I go along.
“Generally I don’t like to revert back and have regrets. I’m not holding anything back because I feel that life is just orchestrated in such a way that’s best for us at the moment to evolve as human beings. I think everything was happening for a reason, on the tennis courts, off the tennis courts, to get me to place where I am at the moment.’’
Djokovic sounds weirdly New Age-y when he talks about this unanticipated journey of self-discovery and reinvention.
“It’s constant evolution. It’s just that when things are completely going your way, in this case in professional tennis, when I was winning consistently and being dominant in the tennis world, you know, you’re happy and you’re content, you feel like everything is kind of revolving around tennis. But it’s not like that. Some other things were suffering during that time.
“So it’s always, I guess, figuring out what’s the right balance and right formula to be completely in peace and satisfied with yourself. I used to base all my happiness on winning a tennis match. I try not to do that anymore. It’s not like I don’t care . . . I would love to win every single match I play. But I don’t try to take that as a very essential moment in my life which determines my happiness.”
Except that he’s been so obviously unhappy not winning.
“It’s hard in professional sport to go through that kind of process. Because sports is one of the fields of life where there are many . . . virtues that are presented to people in the best possible way. That’s why people relate to athletes — because of the sacrifice, because of the fight, because there is no way around it. Basically you have to earn the respect and earn the trophies and success by yourself, especially in tennis.
“It seems to me that, especially nowadays, everything is observed through the lens of material success, who lifts more trophies, gets more respect, more fame, more money and a better status in society.”
Of course, it didn’t seem so hollow to him when Djokovic was lifting all those trophies.