The gap between generations appears to be a sort of lonely place, one where your greatest peers have become nostalgia pops. You outlive, refuse to die, adapt alongside the changing of the guard to prolong it. The youth try to take control with a snap of their fingers but you burn the prints from the skin of their hands. The problem for them, of course, is that you’re just that bit better still and so why would you go?
Novak Djokovic needs this, doesn’t he? This pushback, that feeling of something not going his way. There’s a demeanor about him when it happens, a hint of oh-just-you-wait-and-see. It’s an entirely different way of walking, of talking. It’s like he sees himself a martyr on sacrificial stand, an offering. A temptation to just try a little bit because hey, who knows? Maybe? The thing is that nothing ever really gets done off the back of a maybe.
He hooks himself up to the mains, shoulder barges his way into a higher gear. Riling himself full-body-screaming style, anger and rage and confidence hand-in-hand-in-hand, any sense of injustice or bad calls from umpires, line-judges, questionable play from opponents is used, regardless if he’s in the right or wrong. If he perceives himself to be hard done by, in any tiny way slighted, that’s all that matters, it’s time to go, it’s time to move heaven and earth to chase the change of momentum. So frequently, those around him can do nothing. Not the crowd cheering loudly for whoever he’s playing, nor his rivals growing weary on the other side, nor any devil or god keen to make their influences felt. This is a Djokovic thing. Claim you, rip your dog-tag from about your neck, time and again, all of this to remind you that yeah, he’s got you. Oh, he’s got you good. Take it from his cold dead hands if you can but you can’t and you know it.
You wonder if he hasn’t gone mad from the undying nature of it all long ago and what you’re watching now is simply the result of it. That crazy untouchable. Cornflakes for breakfast, the U.S. Open for lunch, therapy for dinner. The void seems to go on forever and through it comes Djokovic, this liquid man, aged but not yet greyed, tired, not yet finished. Having spent the majority of his career teaching us all to fear the man in distant third place, he now finds himself in front. Naturally, this is all he’s ever dreamed of but this writer will admit that they did wonder if achieving his worldly objectives might leave a man a bit directionless.
So easy it is to find yourself without motivation, Djokovic has instead gone hunting for it anywhere he can find. Having called his shots and made them in terms of tennis history, he now finds himself tangled in a battle with time, coming from out of the fogs of the future with the physical faces of youth. Chief amongst these is Carlos Alcaraz, a 20 year old megastar from Spain, donning sleeveless kits that must have Djokovic wondering if he’s destined to be forever haunted by ghosts of his past. Then we have his opponent from the U.S. Open semifinal, Ben Shelton. Confidence that promises titles with just a bit more work, he’ll cause headaches in the future. Djokovic loves it though, you can tell. He values the presence of playing talents that were where he once was, way back before he climbed through the space between really very fucking good and godly. They’ll all remember this as well, in years to come when they’re reflecting back on their own careers, if they’ve won slams or if they haven’t, been world number one or just missed out, they’ll remember when Novak Djokovic read them the riot act out in public, told them they’re not yet fully there when they felt like they should be. That’s what keeps him going this late on, that very specific knowledge of how unlikely it is that he made it in the first place and how very unwilling he is to let it all go.
As he prepares for yet another major final tomorrow, it’s becoming ever clearer that when all is said and done, the lesson of Novak Djokovic’s career will be to get through the rough times. Any way you can, keep it beating, that damn heart of yours. It won’t be pretty because when is it ever? Cry your tears. Wipe the snot. Know your worth. But hang on in there. It gets better but you need to be here to make it happen. So fuck around and find out. Go find stuff to be mad about and be proud of doing it. Ruffle some feathers, cause a scene, be really fucking annoying if you have to be. Get them talking and then do it all over again. And so to the people searching for the reasons behind Djokovic’s behaviors, you need look no further than the fact that he likes kicking rocks. Some of them bounce and land awkwardly but he’s going to keep right on kicking them. And when the day comes when the roots have taken hold and the landscape hasn’t changed in far too long, remember the man that was willing to keep changing it.
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Popcorn Tennis 