Novak Djokovic has a way of winning even when he’s losing. He has a way of patiently absorbing his opponent’s most devastating play, doing just enough to stay alive, and choosing precisely the right moment to strike back. He’ll lose a spectacular rally and then, while the commentators are still gushing about the other player, unspectacularly win the next point. You’ll think he’s getting run off the court, and then he’ll absolutely maul a couple of forehand winners, and suddenly you realize that he’s about to win the set. Tennis is a game of moments hidden inside a game of runs. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a player who knows how to exploit that duality better than Djokovic.
He’s as capable of spectacular dominance as any player who’s ever lived. He can take players apart with surgical ruthlessness, as he did against poor David Goffin in the Wimbledon quarterfinals Wednesday; he won the second set of that match 6-0, and it didn’t feel that close. He can hit shots that make you think your TV is a liar. But it’s that other mode, his dark mode of tactical endurance, that makes him the most fearsome tennis player of the past decade and possibly the most fearsome of all time. He’s a genius at operating within bad runs in such a way as to give himself the best chance of seizing key moments.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better example of this side of Djokovic’s game than Sunday’s Wimbledon final, in which he withstood a five-hour assault by Roger Federer—the all-time men’s leader in major titles, the massive international crowd favorite, and the matchless legend of the sport—to win 7-6 (5), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 13-12 (3). I mean … read that scoreline again. Ridiculous, right? 13-12 (3) is not a tennis set; it’s your seventh-grade math homework. But hidden in that snarl of numbers and parentheses is the story of Djokovic’s almost supernatural perseverance, which might be unparalleled in the history of tennis.
Let’s put our cards on the table here. If you’re reading this outside a very limited geographical area in Eastern Europe, there’s a good chance you were rooting for Federer today. There’s also a good chance you don’t like Djokovic much. Federer worship has become—sometimes tediously—a default position for both casual fans and the tennis cognoscenti, and Djokovic has never been widely loved within the game. To his own fans, his relative unpopularity has to do with American and western European chauvinism and the reluctance of privileged fans from traditional tennis countries to see a Serb gate-crash the glass tower of Nadal and Federer. To everyone else, it has to do with Djokovic being kind of smug and needy and stressful to watch, and the way he seems like he’s a little too desperate for you to like him, and the way he rips his shirt off when he’s furious, and the way he smirks and bellows and hams it up for the crowd in ways the crowd didn’t ask for and doesn’t especially want. Let’s say both sides have a point.
In any case, I didn’t talk to a single person today who wasn’t rooting for Federer. I was rooting for Federer. Nick Kyrgios, who knows a thing or two about crowds and their affections, was rooting for Federer. Kyrgios summed up the common fan position pretty well during a rant on a podcast in May, when he accused Djokovic with having a “sick obsession” with being liked. “He just wants to be like Roger,” he said. “It’s very cringeworthy,” he added. Yesterday, Kyrgios tweeted “Federer please win”—followed, because he is Kyrgios, by the ghost emoji.
So if you’ve just sat through a thrilling, punishing, five-hour meat grinder of a final—one that included the first fifth-set tiebreak in the history of the All England Club, a fact that John McEnroe was a little too giddy about in the commentary booth—and watched the player you love have his heart torn out on the ESPN live feed, you might not be in the mood to read about the ferocious mental toughness of the player who beat him. This is, in essence, the whole tragedy of Djokovic. He arrived either a little too early or a little too late in the Federer-Nadal screenplay—too late to seem like an equal partner in the story, too early for the story to have ended without him—and as a result has always felt weirdly extraneous, even as he’s won 16 majors and been the best player in the world for most of the last 10 years. (Some weird hiccups and mysterious injuries aside, his peak has arguably lasted longer than Federer’s.) Tennis fans appreciate him grudgingly; even on his most triumphant days, there’s often a feeling that the top headline should be FEDERER LOSES, not DJOKOVIC WINS.
This is too bad, because Djokovic—even if you root against him—has become the most fascinating character in tennis. His win today was so implausible as to be actually absurd, but it was also perfectly characteristic of him; it illustrated the extent he’s gone to turn his weaknesses into strengths. Just look at the stats. Federer (who is, again, the near-universal choice for greatest player of all time) won 36 games in a major final … and lost. Federer won at least six games in all five sets … and lost. Federer didn’t face a single break point in the first three sets … and lost. (He also lost two of those sets.) Federer won more games than Djokovic, 36-32. He won more points than Djokovic, 218-204. He served better than Djokovic by every measure: more aces (25-10), fewer double faults (6-9), higher first-serve percentage (63-62), higher percentage of points won on both his first serve (79-74) and second serve (51-47). He won more net points (51-24) and won them at a higher rate (78 percent-63 percent). He won more break points (7-3) and converted them at a higher rate (54 percent-38 percent). Djokovic is the best returner in the history of tennis, but in the final, Federer won more receiving points (79-64) and at a higher rate (36 percent-32 percent). He committed more unforced errors than Djokovic—his forehand was wobbly early in the match, and his recently rock-solid backhand became a little erratic during hour five—but more than made up his 10-point deficit there by hitting 40 more winners than Djokovic, 94-54.
In just about every category imaginable, Federer was the better player, and he lost. If you watched the match without looking at the score, and you didn’t know Djokovic’s history in matches like this, you’d have thought Federer was in command. (If you did know Djokovic’s history, chances are you never fully believed Federer could win, even when he was up two match points.) Federer was more active, more aggressive, and more apt to hit memorable shots; he spent the afternoon flying toward the net and touching tiny intimate drop shots into un-gettable positions over the net and pulverizing aces. And he lost.
Federer dominated the game of runs but couldn’t keep Djokovic from seizing control of the game of moments. After getting played off the court in the second set, Djokovic erected a sort of bleak force field around himself; he took the air out of the match, took the crowd out of it, and ground his way through a third set that suddenly seemed to have no rhythm. Federer had all the momentum, so Djokovic turned forward motion into a slog. Unable to hurt Federer’s serve, he played to survive to the tiebreaks. And once he got there, he was able to accelerate his game just enough to be the first to seven points. It was tight, brutal, unpoetic tennis with no margin for error, and he pulled it off. And as a result, Djokovic became the first man to win Wimbledon after facing match points since Bob Falkenburg in 1948.
What’s so fascinating about this is that you can draw a direct line between Djokovic’s seemingly indestructible mental toughness and the precise character traits that have kept him from being more loved by fans. Let’s assume Kyrgios is right and Djokovic is desperate to be liked. Everywhere Federer goes, the crowd adores him; he’s played out the whole endless twilight of his career with a permanent home-court advantage such as no other player before him has ever experienced. When he’s winning, the crowd shares and magnifies his joy; when he’s losing, fans will him to come back. There’s a net under him as well as across from him; he plays every match with a buffer of emotional support.
Now consider how things are for Djokovic. He wants that kind of love, and almost never gets it. When he wins Wimbledon, and struts forward, smirking, to make the crowd watch his excruciating grass-eating bit, the applause is … polite. Before then, nearly everyone in the stadium, and nearly everyone watching at home, millions of people around the world, were praying for him to lose. The player who most covets affection is the player from whom the crowd most stubbornly withholds its affection. I’m sorry, but that has to feel miserable. On some level, he’s playing in a nightmare, in match after match. A normal person would probably break down. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t they love me? Yet Djokovic somehow turns this scenario into a recipe for continual victory.
Is it nonsensical to suggest that Djokovic is so able to endure adversity, and so strong in the most stressful moments, because he’s essentially playing through adversity and stress all the time? That he’s become the most mentally tough player in tennis by starting out as one of the most emotionally fragile?
Federer’s game went haywire in the biggest moments of the final—his two match points in the fifth set, all three tiebreaks—and it certainly looked as though the pressure had gotten to him. He visibly tightened, as if he were thinking don’t screw up, all these people are rooting for you. Then he started spraying errors past the baseline. Djokovic stayed relatively cool. He knows how to stay calm and play smart when he’s being outplayed because he’s used to feeling that things aren’t going his way. He knows how to capitalize on a match’s moments of crisis because he is in a perpetual state of micro-crisis. He’s learned to rely on himself because he can’t rely on the crowd. Of course this is all speculation—I can’t see inside Djokovic’s mind—but it has explanatory value during matches like today’s, when he wins in ways that seem to defy all tennis logic. It also has an irony that feels Djokovician in its essence. He wanted us to love him and we didn’t, so he figured out how to overcome us as well as his opponent. We helped him learn to win by wanting him to lose.
