On The Brink
At its core, all human experience revolves around stories. We each have our own and then we have our favorites from the past, but also from the present. Stories whose threads get woven in real time. As our monkey brains try to make sense of life, death, the universe, our place in it, we cling to these stories as a way to make sense of the chaos around us. All our primitive brains want is some certainty, some glimpse of truth about this whole mess we’ve been dumped in.
Our stories, like our existence, can be of an infinite variety. There are little ones, there are big ones. There are happy ones, there are sad ones. There are some where we are limited to the role of a spectator, and ones where we actually played a part in it, however small it was. Our own life is the story we get to craft (to what extent we actually have full power to do that remains debatable).
What does this have to do about this specific US Open? Everything, really.
This extremely individualistic sport is ever hungry for narratives. Ever needy of some structure to make sense of the absurdity of its nature. I firmly believe many of us tennis addicts follow the sport because in it we see a sort of parable of our own existence: as our favorite player stands all alone on the court, trying to overcome challenges armed with nothing more than a stick, shoes, and skill, we see our own puny struggles to face life armed with not much more than that.
There is one enormous story at this US Open, and a very clear protagonist: Novak Djokovic. It’s a very powerful story because it manages to weave a bunch of different stories into one. It’s his own story about becoming the best ever at this silly game. It’s the sports’ own story about a rather arbitrary (but seemingly ironclad) ultimate challenge: to win all four Slam events in one year (the history behind this concept is pretty random, so do look it up). Not only that, but the whole sports’ history is also pulled here as Djokovic tries to end up with the most major titles of anyone in men’s tennis history. There’s recent stories, too: the one about how the third wheel behind two GOATs doggedly chased them down until finally overcoming them. There’s just a lot of narrative around this two week-long event. Can Djokovic do it? Can he win seven matches and etch himself in a bunch of the biggest narratives of this sport? Can his feat become a part of the stories of millions who are following his quest?
I’m not sure how many sports fans realize the extent to which they’ve willingly woven their favorite athlete’s stories into their own narrative. And it’s not one story, either — they become part of a bunch of different strands, snaking around through time and space, trying to see if the present has something to add to them.
This is why as Djokovic begins this epic quest to win the 2021 US Open, all I can think of is how things have gone for him in previous US Opens.
Not particularly well, is what I want to say. And it seems ridiculous: he’s won it 3 times! Plenty of all time great tennis players go through their careers without winning a single US Open. There has been success in New York for Djokovic. Heck, maybe the defining moment of his career came here, nearly 10 years ago.
But there has also been a lot of disappointment. Facts give stories weight, and the numbers paint a rather unique story. While Djokovic has made eight US Open finals in his career (second-most for him at the four big ones), he has lost five of them. That’s the same number of defeats in major title matches at the other 3 Slams combined (he’s 9–0 at Australia, 2–4 in Paris, 6–1 at Wimbledon).
Throughout our lives we encounter plenty of absurdity and we try our damn hardest to make sense of it, even if it seems impossible. Good luck trying to explain why arguably the greatest hard court player of all time can be undefeated at one hard court Slam finals (Australia), and have such a mediocre record at the other hard court Slam (US Open). They even have the same surface, down to the provider!
But that’s where the similarities end. Australia marks a beginning. An opening battle after a period of rest and preparation. The stadium is different. Fans are different. Hotels are different. The air probably feels different. The water likely does, too. And food, that ever pressing need for all humans, surely tastes different.
New York represents the end. We all know the tennis season doesn’t actually finish when the US Open does (does it ever end?), but really, it’s as close to a conclusion as we get. All the battles have been fought. The body has been depleted, nourished, depleted again. The mind has gone through all the possible emotions, over and over again. The finish line is near, but there is just not a whole lot of gas in the tank. The story of a season, the story of a year, a story that nears its final chapter with everyone involved in various states of exhaustion.
Perhaps those are all reasons why things have gone poorly for Djokovic so often in New York City.
But maybe it’s just one of those weird things that happen and there’s no rational explanation for it.
After all, exhaustion can’t suddenly show up when you’re up 6–5, 40–0 and you blow endless set points and end up losing the 2007 final in straight sets.
Then losing to that same opponent the next two years in the semifinals, only taking one set.
The first strands of Djokovic as the Houdini of tennis do appear in 2010, with two two match points saved against Roger Federer, the frequent tormentor of Arthur Ashe Stadium for Djokovic from 2007 till that moment. But that event does not end with a title for Djokovic, because Rafael Nadal was significantly better than him in the final. Though that was Nadal’s first ever appearance in a US Open final, and Djokovic had won all 3 of their most recent hard court matches, all without dropping a set.
2011 finally saw Djokovic win the title, but he was twice a point away from not making the final. And unlike 2010, those match points he faced weren’t even on his serve. The title came at a cost, though: Djokovic’s body barely had enough to cross the finish line of that final against Nadal, and his miraculous 2011 season more or less ended then.
2012 remains inexplicable. Djokovic allowed his imperious form (hadn’t lost a set before the semis) to be stopped by…the wind. Few who watched will forget how Djokovic lost the first set of the semifinal against David Ferrer basically because he disagreed with mother nature on how the wind should behave during his matches. That same phenomenon happened in the final, where it created a hole too big to climb out of. Once again Djokovic saw someone claim their first US Open title, Andy Murray, at his expense.
2013 was a variation of 2010. Djokovic was just not good enough against an extremely determined Rafael Nadal.
2014 was a nadir of sorts. Djokovic fell to Kei Nishikori in the semifinal, seemingly unable to overcome the heat of the day. Sure, Nishikori was playing the tennis of his life, but at his best he is still a lesser version of Djokovic. Their violent head-to-head kinda hints at that. In the final Marin Cilic awaited, and even though he also was playing the tournament of his life, he had yet to beat Djokovic in any kind of match.
2015 was mostly glorious. Sure, Roberto Bautista Agut and shockingly Feliciano López put up stiff tests and took a set each en route to the final, but once there, Djokovic was extraordinary against a terrifying version of Roger Federer.
2016…well, it’s a testament to Djokovic’s relentlessness that he made the final, given that he was hurt that whole tournament. For the third time, someone else took their first US Open title at Djokovic’s expense, this time Stan Wawrinka.
2017 was the first US Open Djokovic missed due to injury since 2005. His streak of making semis or better since 2007 was broken.
2018 was a rebirth of sorts, but not without drama. Carrying the momentum of a first Cincinnati title (Djokovic’s story at that specific tournament had been completely tinged by absurdity and disappointment as well) Djokovic managed to take only his third and last US Open, though he was pushed to the limit in his first two matches by inspired underdogs and extremely humid conditions, before the most brutal straight set quarterfinal against John Millman, a match whose scoreline will never tell what kind of battle it was.
2019 saw the end of the “well, if Djokovic shows up to the US Open he’ll at least make the semis” narrative, as injury forced him to retire against Wawrinka in the round of 16.
A year later, Djokovic would be defaulted from his round of 16 match when he accidentally hit a lineswoman in the neck with a tennis ball. A moment of anger with completely unintended consequences, made more absurd by the context of that match: Djokovic had just gotten broken at the tail end of the first set against Pablo Carreño Busta. He hadn’t even lost the set yet! But as he angrily swatted the ball behind him, it hit the poor lady, and that was that. He didn’t mean to do it, but he did it, and the consequence was inevitable.
So here we are, 2021, and Djokovic, for the first time in his career (story #1), and for the first time in men’s tennis since 1969 (story #2) has a chance to win the calendar Slam (story #3), which would also put him at 21 Slam titles, ahead of every male player to ever play the game (story #4). All eyes are on him. And not a whole lot of comfort will be available for him in the cavernous Arthur Ashe Stadium. Lots of memories of past disappointment, or sheer weirdness.
But all of this should not obscure the fact that Djokovic has managed, at the age of 34, to put himself on the brink of all these stories, and that alone is already more than remarkable. My heart tells me this quest will end in disappointment and my head kind of agrees. They both are trying to figure out just what agent of chaos will disrupt Djokovic this time around. Every human has a place where they feel like things just don’t go very well for them. There’s always something that pops up and ruins everything. For Novak Djokovic, Cincinnati used to be that place (it might still be). The Olympics, wherever they’re held, are that place. And the US Open will forever be that place for him.
So if Djokovic actually manages to win those 7 matches, what an accomplishment it will be. From being on the brink to bathing in the glory of history, of a chance at immortality, a chance to write a spectacular chapter in his own story, the story of tennis, the story of sport, and the stories of the millions of us who will be watching, fans of his or not.
The funny thing is that even if he fails, Djokovic will become a part of all those stories anyway, just as it happened to Serena Williams in 2015, when she was also trying to win this strange Holy Grail of tennis. We all remember what happened. Many probably remember where they were exactly when Roberta Vinci, underdog of underdogs, put an end to that story, inserting herself in the fabric of our memories.
Getting to the brink is already momentous. Whatever happens, it’ll become a part of our story.
