Australian Open: When will we learn to love Djokovic?

Audiences have never truly taken to Novak Djokovic, even though he is one of the greatest players to ever wield a racket.

Australian Open Winner Novak Djokovic is pictured singing to a crowd after defeating Andy Murray. Credit: AAP

He is a decent man, an assiduous husband, courteous in his actions, beloved by his countrymen, and now, having won an 11th grand-slam title, including five out of the past six, one of the finest players to have flicked a racket.

And yet he still plays with crowds fiercely against him: at Wimbledon, New York, Paris and, once again, in Melbourne, where he won a sixth Australian Open yesterday in imperious fashion. It raises the question: when will the world learn to love Novak Djokovic?

The Serb is no longer merely a fine tennis player. With the dominance he has established in recent years, he must be regarded as among the greatest sportsmen of the age. One doubts that his joints will surrender to the exertions of the tour, as those of Rafael Nadal seem to have done, which means only one thing: the record of 17 grand-slam singles held by Roger Federer is now in danger.

Yesterday, Andy Murray was the latest victim of the Serb’s brilliance. Commentators fretted about the Scot’s tactics. Some urged him to play with risk, others to mimic Gilles Simon, who took Djokovic to five sets in the last 16 by slowing everything down. Some, again, wanted Murray to charge the net, while others conjectured that he stood a better chance from the baseline.

Australian Open Winner Novak Djokovic is pictured singing to a crowd after defeating Andy Murray. Credit: AAP

But these debates, while interesting, obscured a deeper point. Namely, that there is no tactical plan that can be realistically deployed by Murray, or indeed anyone else, that is capable of closing the chasm that has opened up at the top of the men’s game. Djokovic is in a class of his own.

His game has become a fascinating paradox. In the opening set against Murray, and in the first two sets of a chastening semi-final against Federer, he bludgeoned his opponents into submission. This is a Djokovic we have glimpsed before, particularly in the 2011 US Open final against Nadal, when he defeated the Spaniard for sheer power, the Serb’s flatter ground shots forcing his opponent ever deeper behind the baseline.

Yet Djokovic is now capable of switching, almost imperceptibly, from “shock and awe” tennis, to a more defensive game, often at precisely the moment when his opponents have adjusted to the early assaults. In the second set against Murray, Djokovic slowed it down, retreated behind the baseline, adding intensity only towards the end of the set, as the Scot’s befuddlement intensified. Murray was not only outplayed, but out-thought too.

Perhaps the key psychological turning point in Djokovic’s career occurred in the semi-final against Federer at Flushing Meadows in 2011. To that point, the Serb was vexed by the partisanship of audiences: the hero worship, the adoration, the throat-grabbing intensity of the cheers whenever his opponent hit a winner. His face betrayed a deep, almost existential confusion when his own successes were greeted with near-silence. In those crucial moments at the end of the fifth set, something in Djokovic seemed to break. Federer was being carried on a wave of exuberance, taking the eighth game to move into a 5-3 lead. The Swiss would serve for the match and during the changeover the crowd kept up their chanting for Roger, Roger. Djokovic turned to his team, gestured about the unfairness of it all, and then walked to the other end of the court as if it were the gallows.

But at 40-15, with Federer holding two match points, Djokovic went for broke. It was as if in that unforgettable forehand winner, which grazed the line before Federer had finished his follow-through, he channelled his anger, his confusion and, perhaps also, his hope that one day he might be loved. Even at the time, it seemed more like a cri de coeur than a cross-court stroke.

Djokovic responded by smiling and waving, as if daring the audience to applaud. They got the point, enjoyed the irony, and people began to cheer, even stand. As they did so, the chemistry of the stadium changed. Djokovic won the next point, took the game and set, then raced into a lead in the fifth and, although the crowd remained on the Swiss’s side, it was as if he had been inoculated against their effects.

“That was a huge turning point,” he told me in an interview. “Sometimes there are moments that change everything. I was angry at the time. I had just dropped my serve. I was angry with the crowd, too. Roger is a legend of the sport . . . because of his success and because of who he is on and off the court, he is often the crowd favourite. That is difficult for me. I won’t lie.

“But you cannot blame the crowd. You have to earn their support. As that final set progressed, the crowd was getting louder and louder. But something inside me accepted it. I lost the point at 30-15 to go match point down and said to myself, ‘OK, now I am going to give it all I have. There is no point in being angry. No more.’ These are the moments when you have to pull something from your imagination. Under the circumstances, it is the best shot I have played in my career.”

Since then, Djokovic has won eight grand-slams in little more than three years and is today, to my mind, playing tennis at a higher level than anyone in history. Some will say that with Nadal struggling with injury and Federer a tad past his best, the competition is less intense than it was, say, five years ago. But it is also worth remembering that Federer won many early grand-slams in relatively weak fields, capturing finals against players such as Mark Philippoussis and Fernando Gonzalez.

Either way, Djokovic can put the debate to bed if he continues in the same vein. He needs six titles to equal Federer, which equates to two a season for each of the next three years. Whether he wins the public over on this journey is, however, a different matter. What seems certain is that he will continue to play with skill and daring, and conduct himself with class.

The Times