The U.S. Open’s AI-powered IBM Insights give Laslo Djere a 24% chance of beating Novak Djokovic in the third round of the U.S. Open tonight. This is obviously bullshit. Yes, Djere played Djokovic close in their only previous meeting, winning the first set 6-2 before falling in a pair of tiebreaks. But I could fling any number of stats at you to prove that Djokovic’s chances of losing are essentially negligible. He has not lost in the third round of this tournament since 2006. He has not lost before the fourth round in any major since 2017. He is 20-1 in his last 21 matches at majors, and that one loss was a nail-biter to Carlos Alcaraz, who is ranked just the 37 spots higher than Djere. Djokovic would not lose this match once if he had to play it four times, no matter what the odds tell you.
But the more conclusive reason that Djokovic has no chance of losing tonight is that he is simply on another plane than Djere. You hear a lot that at the top of the rankings in tennis, the difference between the players is more mental than physical or technical. This is mostly bullshit, too. Djokovic’s return of serve is infinitely better than 7th-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas’s, his forehand is miles clear of #3 Daniil Medvedev’s, his movement could make #9 Taylor Fritz cry, and his firepower is to #13 Alex de Minaur’s as a firework is to a party popper.
Djokovic does have the mental edge as well, of course. Still, that mostly comes into play against the few rivals who, over the course of the last 15-plus years, have been able to match his technical skills on a given day. Most players on tour can’t come close to equaling Djokovic’s mastery of the game — once Novak punches their serve back into play, it’ll become apparent that they can’t hit aggressive backhands consistently, or once he gets them on the run, he’ll expose that they can’t defend. Tonight, Djere will lose because it will become painfully obvious at some point during the match that he can’t possibly match Djokovic in a crucial area. Maybe it’ll be the serve, maybe the movement, maybe the consistency, but it’ll be something. Djere isn’t going to lose to Djokovic because he choked on a big point.
Iga Świątek is on another plane from most, too. Her demolition of Kaja Juvan (her best friend!) today should become instantly legendary, even as far as tennis demolitions go. Świątek won a staggering 50 of the 66 total points played. Winning two-thirds of the points in a match is usually sufficient grounds to shower the loser with pity — I’ve never seen a player win a percentage as absurd as Iga’s 75%. Juvan was completely and utterly screwed from the start.
So clearly we’re dealing with a hierarchy here. Some players are better than others; some players are completely and irrevocably better than others.
Another soundbite tennis people like to throw around is that players truly believe they can be the best in the world at some point. Take Tommy Paul, who clearly believes the sky is the limit for his career. He’s having a great year. He got a profile in New York magazine. Ranked 14th, Australian Open semifinalist, recent conqueror of Carlos Alcaraz. But he’s never going to get to #1 in the world.
It’s nothing against him, it’s just that the task is so monumentally tough. I was at Paul’s Australian Open semifinal against Djokovic, then the top-ranked player on the ATP, and it was a pretty painful watch. Paul clawed back from 1-5 down to 5-5 in the first set, but after that, only managed to win three of the last 17 games of the match. Djokovic would hit repeatedly shots like the return below that had Paul walking to the other side of the court in defeat before the point was over, shots that Paul just wasn’t physically capable of. To be clear, getting crushed by Djokovic isn’t a death knell for your hopes of winning a major. But to get crushed by him when you’re already fully developed and reasonably experienced on tour might be.
Here’s my theory: A player’s undying belief that they can one day be ranked #1 in the world is more productive in blunting the psychological damage of a loss than in actually helping them get to #1. It’s impossible for most players to reach #1, really. Lest it seem like I singled Paul out, Andrey Rublev, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Karen Khachanov, and Alex de Minaur, who are all ranked higher than Paul, are never getting to #1 either. (And that’s a conservative list.) Everyone knows fairly early on whether or not a player is or is capable of living on that first tier. Alcaraz was immediately and blindingly special, as were the Williams sisters and the Big Three, as was Świątek when she won Roland-Garros at 19. Some players need a little longer to round out their games — Stan Wawrinka didn’t hit his prime until he was 28 (though even he never attained the top ranking) — but for the most part, it doesn’t take much to differentiate players between #1 material and everyone else.
And I think that the players know this too, in a place deep and dark that their delusional belief in themselves covers as best it can. There is no way Paul and de Minaur, who Djokovic pummeled in Melbourne even more viciously than he did Paul, could have taken beatings that brutal to Djokovic and come out of it thinking they could beat him the next time. The professional tennis tour isn’t a living ecosystem of superpredators who can all eat each other; the Challenger Tour may be like that. The two or three players who marry hard work with genetic luck feast while everyone else fights for scraps.
Think about how hard that must be — Paul essentially said in his presser after the Djokovic loss that his gameplan fell to pieces almost immediately, and he couldn’t do anything thereafter. That, to me, sounds devastating. You spend your whole life trying to perfect a craft. You master it better than anyone in the city you grew up in, maybe the country for a moment. You get your shot against the all-time-best player in a major semifinal. And you get demolished so thoroughly that it’s clear you had no way to win from the beginning. Short of a complete physical transformation, you’ll never beat that guy.
And yet, Paul seems unbothered. Sure, he’s had some bad losses this year. But he’s ranked at a career-high, nearly beat Alcaraz twice in a row during the North American swing, and is into the second week at the U.S. Open. How is he doing it? The logic says that if he keeps winning, he’ll run into Djokovic, at which point he’ll get pulverized again.
I think it’s that his belief in himself defies logic. By maintaining hope that he can one day attain the top of the pyramid, a loss to Djokovic becomes a roadblock rather than stark proof that he might be able to crack the top five in the world, but never the top two. I don’t see any other way that a player can keep going without dragging their feet when it’s so apparent that the standout players on each tour are blessed with something all the hard work in the world could never produce.
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I hope I haven’t disrespected the players not ranked at the very top of the game. Really, I admire them, maybe more than the all-time-greats. What better example of perseverance than the pursuit of a task that may not just seem impossible, but might literally be impossible? What better way to pay respect to the difficulty of conquering a sport than to keep trying in the face of that impossibility? It’s far more than I could ever do, even if I had all the athletic gifts in the world. These players won’t reach the summit they’re chasing, but I’ll remember that they tried.
And I wish less of the tennis world would exaggerate the odds of the underdog. I understand it, obviously — drama sells. A commentator declaring a match a foregone conclusion kind of leeches the competition out of the competition. But I think that minimizes what the underdog is up against. It’s the impossibility of their task that makes it so amazing when they take a meaningful step towards it. So part of me hopes for a day that a broadcaster asks their partner what a hopelessly trailing, overmatched opponent can do to beat Djokovic, Alcaraz, Świątek, or another all-time-great, and gets the boring and cruel but ultimately honest answer:
“Nothing.”
Popcorn Tennis 