It was 3:06 in the morning when Novak Djokovic, wolf modehowled in the Roland Garros headquarters after capturing a hard-fought victory against Lorenzo Musetti, the one from Carrara was fantastic until the episode entered the Nole zone; that is, when the vast majority’s strength begins to fail and their arm shrinks, the Serb grows and proceeds: from anguish to a devastating partial score of 10-1, from vertigo and from seeing oneself outside of greatness to be there again, infinitely positioned, already in the round of 16 at Roland Garros. 7-5, 6-7 (6), 2-6, 6-3 and 6-1, after 4h 29m. What to expect from him?
“I want to thank all of you, the public and everyone who has stayed until now. I have heard that it is the match that ended here the latest (the limit was set by the 2020 Nadal-Sinner, then resolved at 1:26), so I am delighted to be part of history,” thanked the number one, who did not He stitches without a thread and in addition to having become the new record holder of the Parisian night, he was hunting for another record, this one of even greater value; With 369 victories, the same as that recorded by the Swiss Roger Federer before his retirement, he is already the tennis player with the highest record in the Grand Slams.
Djokovic had no choice but to intervene when the focus of Paris was already on the brasseries from the center. Forcefully a night owl, due to the small mishap caused by the rain this year, he jumped onto the track at 10:40 p.m., when he should have done so around 8:15 p.m. The organization, however, relocated the match between Bergs and Dimitrov—postponed the previous day due to water—in the center and there began the mess that he himself later accentuated, by not being able to seal the second set tiebreaker and sinking into one of those whirlpools you fall into from time to time.
In any case, he escaped the mess with a majestic final reaction that guides him towards Monday’s clash with the Argentine Francisco Cerúndolo. “It’s impossible to go to sleep now with all this adrenaline, so if someone throws a party, I’m in!” he joked before leaving the track, applauded by those present and also by his wife and the members of his team. , from whom he asked several times for help in search of the turning point that finally occurred; but, this time, nothing bad. Simply pure and simple necessity.
From the rush to “the great wave”
“I’ve been in real trouble. There were moments when I didn’t know what to do… It really was the fans who gave me the energy I needed to come back. When they started chanting my name, I became a different tennis player,” he explained to the journalists who were waiting for his answers in an improvised mixed zone, biting his tongue — “I have my opinion (about the schedule), but I don’t want to get into this; There is a certain beauty in winning at this hour”—and ensuring that, in the final stretch of the pulse, he had felt a sensation similar to that of “surfing a big wave.”
Djokovic, then, has already entered the free zone of the tournament, but a double reading can be drawn from this latest appearance. There are those who put before the final display of muscle, that ability to remake themselves and turn things around; but, at the same time, there are those others who continue to insist on the difficult moment that the Balkan player is going through, practically unrecognizable in a course in which he has not yet won any title and who is now fighting in the Bois de Boulogne, having become a true unknown, another day in fits and starts and with scares in between. The dynamics of the present.
Upon landing in Paris, the head of the circuit – exposed these days to the loss of the throne, in favor of the Italian Jannik Sinner – slipped a phrase that went unnoticed, but that describes the reality of the moment, enigmatic as it could not be. “There are several things that have happened in recent months, but I don’t want to get into that. I hope you understand. I just don’t want to open Pandora’s box and talk about it,” he stated mysteriously, saying without saying. For this reason, and for the strange sequence signed this season, the question floats in the air: Which Djokovic are we facing today? Half full or half empty?
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