A few years ago, a reporter asked the remarkable Gael Monfils about his woeful record against tennis’ Big Three. Monfils has been one of the best players on earth for two decades, a man with seemingly every tennis skill, and yet he is 0-20 against Novak Djokovic, 2-14 against Rafa Nada, and 4-10 against Roger Federer.
“Is there some sort of mental block?” the reporter asked, or something to that effect.
“Is there something about their styles that makes them particularly difficult for you?” the reporter asked.
“Do you feel like you have not made the necessary adjustments?” the reporter asked.
Monfils blinked.
“I think,” he said, “they are better than me.”
I thought about this quite a bit Tuesday night as American Taylor Fritz tried to finally beat Novak Djokovic. He came into the match with an 0-10 record against Djoker, yes, but this one had a chance to be different. This was a quarterfinal match at the U.S. Open, Fritz’s favorite tournament (he reached the U.S. Open Final last year), on his favorite surface in front of an American crowd.
And Djokovic, at age 38, is a shell of himself. True, even a Novak Djokovic shell is good enough to beat anybody not named Sinner or Alcaraz, good enough to get into a Grand Slam semifinal every time (assuming he doesn’t face anybody named Sinner or Alcaraz in an earlier round).
But you can see the clock ticking to midnight. Djokier did not play a single hard-court tournament leading up to the Open. The first couple of rounds, he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. If Taylor Fritz was ever going to slay Djokovic, this would be the time.
Spoiler alert. He did not: Djokovic won in four sets, clinching the match on a Fritz double fault. And here’s what I kept thinking about during the match:
Is Djokovic simply better than Fritz? Still?
My best answer: I don’t think so. Not exactly. When it comes to pure tennis, pure ball-striking, movement, conditioning, matching serve for serve, stroke for stroke, no, I don’t think a 38-year-old Djokovic is better. Fritz is 27, in his athletic prime, he has relentlessly worked on his game, and he has developed one of the world’s best serves, a killer forehand, a rock-solid backhand. He moves well for a big man. And he’s developed a pretty good reputation as a fighter. He moved himself into the world’s top five.
I believe that if Fritz were playing someone LIKE Djokovic — that is to say a player with all the same basic tennis skills but not named Novak Djokovic — he’d have a better than 50-50 shot of winning.
But he wasn’t playing a doppleganger. He was playing the genuine article. Fritz came out super nervous. lost his first service game after a series of errors, and then couldn’t come back despite getting about 64,000 break chances.
Then in the second set, Fritz got broken again, but this time did break back, dramatically, just in time, an occasion so monumental that John McEnroe suggested it might change the very trajectory of his career. Fritz promptly tanked his own serve in the most disheartening way imaginable, and Djoker served out the set.
In the third set, the New York crowd got under Djokovic’s skin — these battles with crowds around the world have marked his career — and Fritz seemed ascendant. The two then played a grueling fourth set, going winner for winner and error for error until it was closing time. Then, Fritz went for an ill-conceived topspin lob on game point, and it drifted long. A moment later, Fritz double-faulted his chances away on match point. That was that. Djokovic goes to his 53rd Grand Slam semifinal. Fritz goes 0-11.
Novak Djokovic is the greatest tennis player who ever lived — I no longer believe there’s a compelling argument against him. Why? Unlike Fed or Nadal or Sampras or Laver or anyone else you want to put up against him, he has never relied on one brilliant style of play. No. If he needs to serve and volley, he does. If he needs to grind for six hours, he does. If he needs big serving, he serves big.
He has always had the ability to turn into his opponent’s worst nightmare.
On Tuesday, that simply required him turning into Novak Djokovic.
📓 This is Joe’s Notebook.
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