Novak Djokovic Needs Some More Rivals

The biggest highlight of the men’s singles draw of the U.S. Open, in terms of tennis quality, was Daniil Medvedev’s sensational upset of Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinals. What are usually thought to be Medvedev’s weaknesses against Alcaraz — his forehand and his incredibly deep-positioned returns of serve — performed to perfection, firing sharp angles with unsettling consistency. Even Alcaraz, who the tennis world spent much of the last three months happily crowning as its king, was befuddled to the point of panic.

The second biggest highlight was Ben Shelton’s run to the semifinals. The crowd loved him, he hit a couple 149 mph serves, he had a dramatic match with fellow American Frances Tiafoe, and when he lost to Novak Djokovic in the last four, Djokovic mocked Shelton’s hang-up-the-phone celebration, which stirred Twitter into a frenzy.

Jannik Sinner’s fourth-round, five-set loss to Alexander Zverev may have been a highlight for some too, though Zverev facing two accusations of domestic violence makes him a very uncomfortable watch for many. And if you’re a Laslo Djere fan, your man taking a two-set lead over Djokovic in the third round (though the last three sets were suspenseless) would have been great. The second set of the Djokovic-Medvedev final was staggering, a 104-minute war of grueling rallies that time and again drove Djokovic to the brink of exhaustion. Djokovic landing an incredible 24th major title made enough headlines to escape into the mainstream.

It’s a short list. But can you name any other men’s matches that were interesting to the masses, either for the quality of tennis or the drama?

If you’re a tennis hipster and watched qualifying, or even some obscure early-round matches, I’m sure you can. I can’t. That’s because outside of Djokovic, Alcaraz, and Medvedev on his best nights, the top of the ATP Tour is not particularly fun right now.

I’ve been avoiding writing this article for a while. I’m sure Djokovic haters have wanted to write it since he passed Roger Federer’s 20 majors at Wimbledon last year, or Rafael Nadal’s 22 at the Australian Open in January. But I always thought that Djokovic was so damn good that I shouldn’t blame the rest of the tour for being mortals in the presence of a god. Djokovic is so superbly skilled, every facet of his game so polished, that the vast majority of the best players in the world could receive the highest quality coaching and nourishment possible and they still wouldn’t be better than him.

So, a word to the Federer-Nadal diehards who are probably rejoicing at the “THIS IS A WEAK ERA” rant that they probably think is to come: I still think Djokovic is the greatest ever, and have thought that since before he reached 20 majors, much less 24.

*sighs heavily* Here we go.

Here are some facts: Djokovic has figured Medvedev out. Medvedev has proven to have the tools to beat Novak, as he did in 2019 (twice), 2020, 2021, and earlier this year. He can outlast Djokovic in long rallies. But in this U.S. Open final, having had more than four years — in his physical prime, I might add — to learn how to beat Djokovic, Medvedev lost in straight sets. He was only competitive in one of them (which he lost anyway), and in that set Djokovic was regularly reacting to long rallies like he’d been shot. Since Djokovic adjusted in the matchup, taking advantage of Medvedev’s deep return position with relentless serve-and-volleying at the 2021 Paris Masters, there has been no adjustment in response.

Here are some more facts: Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner, and Taylor Fritz are all doing worse against Djokovic now than they were a year or two ago. They have shown themselves capable of pushing, and in Tsitsipas’s case beating, Djokovic in the past. But this year, their combined efforts against Djokovic are a straight-set loss at the Australian Open, a straight-set loss at Wimbledon, a straight-set loss in Cincinnati, and a loss at the U.S. Open in — can you guess? — straight sets.

Fact: Andrey Rublev, Zverev, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Frances Tiafoe, Casper Ruud, Alex de Minaur, and Tommy Paul might not be actively regressing against Djokovic, but they are not improving. In their most recent meeting each with the GOAT, they combined to win one set — Rublev’s at Wimbledon. Forget beating Djokovic, most top players can’t even scratch him right now. And with that, I’ve named every Djokovic opponent in the top 14 outside Alcaraz and Holger Rune, who is 2-1 against the 24-time major champion and only 20.

Fact: Djokovic is 36 years old. Everyone else I’ve named (besides Alcaraz and Rune) is between 22 and 27, which, historically, is an age range very conducive to improvement.

Opinion: These players are demoralized. They are still fiercely competitive, especially in matches they know they can win. They have achieved admirable results — Fritz won Indian Wells last year, Ruud has made three major finals, Tsitsipas won the World Tour Finals in 2019. But after repeated losses to Djokovic, who even at 36 isn’t slowing down by enough to give them a foothold, they’ve let go of the dream that they’re going to displace him. The goal of winning a major or becoming world #1 has become a waiting game for Djokovic to retire. This is not going to change until Djokovic either retires or finally starts to decline severely, and in the case of the latter, I think he will still be able to beat a lot of the aforementioned players. Remember, at the Australian Open, Djokovic’s hamstring forced him to abandon his trademark sliding backhand defense. He was as dominant as ever anyway. Goran Ivanišević made some headlines recently when he said Djokovic wanted to play at the 2028 Olympics, at which point he’d be 41. I didn’t bat an eye at the news.

After Djokovic beat Tsitsipas in straight sets to win the Australian Open this year, Tsitsipas said, “Getting our asses kicked is for sure a very good lesson every single time.”

I hate to say this, but it’s not. (Or if it is, Djokovic’s pupils aren’t retaining what he tells them.) The numbers will back me up. Tsitsipas went 2-1 against Djokovic in his first three meetings; he’s 0-10 since and the losses aren’t getting closer. Djokovic himself has shown in the past that it is possible to take repeated beatings from your betters and use that to improve your tennis enough to one day turn the tables — before his first prime in 2011, he went a combined 12-29 against Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, but managed to use the pain from those losses to sharpen his own game. It was a brutal trial by fire, and the current generation’s failure to resist the flames has shown what a mountainous task it is. The NextGen are getting further from their goal as more time passes, and I think it’s because of the psychological torment caused by so many repeated losses.

And this is more than fair! Who likes to constantly fail to meet the gold standard you’ve dedicated your life to chasing? Djokovic is not just the greatest player ever, he’s damn near impossible to make a game plan against because there are no weaknesses to attack. Imagine playing your best, losing by miles, and then being told to play better the next time. How? Is Ruud supposed to make 90% of his first serves? Because that’s what it’ll take to get a win. Sometimes players win a set against Djokovic, and the next time they play Novak beats them so badly that it becomes clear winning the set was a fluke, not a sign of progress. If Djokovic has slowed down from his peak, it’s nearly imperceptible. Sure, he gasses more quickly now, like we just saw in the second set against Medvedev. But that fatigue never impacts his level of play too much, and most players just aren’t good enough to push Djokovic into a match brutal enough that his conditioning will actually cost him. So I’m trying not to blame players for falling short against Djokovic (and Alcaraz) — they’re essentially trying to climb a wall with no handholds.

But all this does mean that their matches against Djokovic aren’t very competitive or exciting. And because we’re talking about top players here, this means that most of Djokovic’s matches aren’t very fun to watch from a competitive standpoint, even in majors, even in late rounds of majors. I’m not saying that Djokovic isn’t fun to watch — it’s incredible watching him excel at a historically high level. But we need to watch Djokovic get tested. He has a reputation as a master at winning from two sets to love down, but of the eight times he’s done it in his career, three of them have come since the start of 2021, all against promising young players (Tsitsipas, Sinner, Lorenzo Musetti). Only one of them produced so much as one break point in the last three sets — Sinner earned one at Wimbledon when he was already down two breaks in the fourth set, and he didn’t take it — and Musetti could scarcely win points down the stretch. None of those players could build on their brief success in their next shots at Djokovic. Despite Novak being an absolute force well into his 30s, the youngsters get some of the blame for that.

Greatness requires a dancing partner to shine properly. Djokovic’s opponents, though, can’t push him to the point that his matches are always, or even often, satisfyingly competitive. (If you can find anyone who is not a Djokovic diehard that felt truly fulfilled after the U.S. Open final, let me know.) That’s not great for the tour. Here you have the greatest tennis player ever, a sporting legend whose legacy continues to build, and besides Alcaraz, no one is forcing his best level out.

Here are the set scores of Djokovic’s major semifinals and finals this year: 7-5, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 7-6, 7-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, 7-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6, 6-1, 6-7, 1-6, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 7-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3. That’s a 23-4 record.

Want to know something? All four of those lost sets came at the hands of Carlos Alcaraz.

Here’s the problem with the ATP: For years now, everyone has been waiting for a challenger who could equal Djokovic. This year, we got one. And it’s still not enough to make the men’s draws at majors consistently interesting. When Alcaraz loses before playing Djokovic or can’t play at all, like we saw at the U.S. and Australian Opens this year, Djokovic inevitably demolishes a lesser competitor in the final. Alcaraz, who at 20 is almost surely not at his peak yet, has done everything we wanted to see from a young ATP player. He beat Djokovic in a Wimbledon final, which I think is as clear a passing of the torch moment as we’re going to get. He took the #1 ranking from Djokovic. He responds to tough losses with immediate and focused improvements. And because of that loss to Medvedev in the U.S. Open semifinals, Alcaraz’s first serious stumble in months, the air went out of the men’s tournament. Maybe not immediately, many called Djokovic-Medvedev a coin-flip match, but when it became clear late in the second set of the final that Medvedev wasn’t taking his chances, I know part of you wanted Alcaraz there instead. At least I know I did.

The responsibility to make men’s tennis competitive isn’t on Alcaraz anymore. He did his job. We can’t rely on one man to be there to play an epic match with Djokovic at every single major. No, the burden shifts to the rest of the ATP now. Medvedev needs to practice passing shots until he’s dreaming about them, or do something else to at least try to break Djokovic’s serve-and-volley stranglehold on him. Rune needs to win a match, which he hasn’t done since July, and show that he intends on keeping the #4 ranking he’s been recently handed. For everyone ranked lower? There’s not much to lose anymore. The promise of winning a major is gone. As Djokovic fades, Alcaraz is going to fill a lot of the dominance gap, and we’re already seeing some players get demoralized from consistently losing to him in a manner similar to the Djokovic-inflicted depression.

It’s time to get crazy. I’m talking Tsitsipas firing his dad (which he said in a Reddit AMA that he’ll never do) and finally fixing that damn backhand return. Sinner getting so fit that he won’t fade again in a five-setter until he’s 35. Fritz learning how to properly finish points at net so he doesn’t have to obsessively engage in baseline hell against Djokovic. Ruud throwing darts at a photo of Rafa until he can compete with him as intensely as he can his other opponents. Tiafoe simply practicing his return of serve, which he recently told Tumaini Carayol of The Guardian that he doesn’t do.

These are tough asks, and I’m guessing some reading this will even find them unreasonable. These players are not blessed with the same godlike skill that Djokovic and Alcaraz have. Not even close. But you can always get better. Djokovic might always have had the backhand, but he did not always have the hands that let him hit a sublime half-volley winner to save break point against Medvedev at 3-4 in the second set of the U.S. Open final. And if you rightfully point out that that improvement took over a decade, how about this: Alcaraz gave out physically at the 2021 U.S. Open and came back for the 2022 season with five-hour endurance. It is possible for the NextGen to get more out of their games, and they’ll have to if they are ever going to win a major with a remotely difficult draw.

*****

Not every major is going to have a men’s singles tournament as bad as the 2023 U.S. Open. The NextGen might not be good enough to win majors, but they can play great matches against each other, like Tsitsipas-Sinner at the Australian Open this year (though that was a rare bright bright spot in another uninspiring men’s tournament). There are reasons to be optimistic for Melbourne next year.

But we all know what makes for high-quality tennis: depth and rivalries. Despite watching all-time-greatness in Djokovic and the most exciting ATP player to come along in years in Alcaraz, without players who can mix it up with both, the men’s game is often boring.

It’s not going to improve overnight. Rune and Sinner need some time. I’m not sure anyone else is complete or hungry enough to compete at the very top. But damn if these players aren’t capable of some amazing things. Watch Tsitsipas in full flight and you’d think he was a multiple-time Roland-Garros champion. Sinner may already have the best running forehand since Juan Martin del Potro. Tiafoe is so fast that he can get to shots you thought were past him already. The NextGen is not untalented. They have weaknesses, sure, but if they fulfill their potential, there are routes to major titles for some of them.

Though that doesn’t mean I think it’ll happen, the possibility is there. The Djokovic-Alcaraz show is the biggest and best thing in men’s tennis by a mile. But other things could dare to be great too.