He is a tennis player who, injured since the beginning of the second set, gravitates on one leg, exposed, theoretically, to an irremediable destiny: that of defeat, that of goodbye and that of the loss of number one. All the misfortune together. Everything is against Novak Djokovic, the Serb is moody and a foot and a half (if not more) out of the tournament, except for that sliver of faith that he has clung to a thousand times to overcome the abysses and get to where he is. no one else has arrived. Everything points against him, in pain and with a very long hell ahead of him, almost four hours of hardship in which he fights against the force of logic, against rationality, against an extreme circumstance. Everything is leading him towards the fall, but the Balkan thing is very incredible and in the end he finds the key to the lock: 6-1, 5-7, 3-6, 7-5 and 6-3, after 4h 39m. His rival, Francisco Cerúndolo, hangs her head and doesn’t believe it. The Philippe Chatrier audience pinches itself, as if it were a dream.
Novak Djokovic curses and projects his frustration towards the chair umpire, angry, resigned, rebelling against a fatal outcome. Everything leads there, everything bothers him. Above all, that right knee injured when doing an apparently light maneuver, without complications, and even less so for a physically gifted person like him, pure chewing gum, rubber. He won the first set, but from that moment on, 2-1 down in the second set against Francisco Cerúndolo, he has been living hell. “I screwed up my knee, I’m slipping all the time. The only thing I ask of you is that you sweep the funds more often.” “The supervisors are supposed to look after the players and I’m telling you, as a player, that the ground is bad,” he pleads during a truce to referee Aurélie Tourte, when the thought (inevitable) has probably already crossed his mind. that perhaps it is the end, and that his fate in this Roland Garros has already been dictated.
The subconscious tries to access that privileged mind, it hits it hard, again and again. But it fails. Nole believes. It is he, the friend of the impossible. Few guess an escape from this terminal situation, but he rows on that left leg and finds a good port. “No-le! No-le! “No-le!” “I-de-mo! I-de-mo! I-de-mo! (Let’s go!)”, cheers the heated headquarters of Paris, trying to revive a party that seems (seems, note the insistence) dead. It would be the logical thing. He is an injured tennis player, on half support, moving on four tiles to generate force from nothing and, if that were not enough, in low hours. Blank this year and having already reached the age of 37, perhaps the normal thing would be for the Serbian – practically everything winnable already won, with barely any space in the showcase – to give up, to give up, to perhaps not get involved in skirmishes of this caliber. ; but there he is, eternally insurgent, rebel with a cause on the track, capable of turning around almost everything. Pills and massages help.
It doesn’t matter that Cerúndolo (25 years old and 27 in the ATP) has him on the ropes, that the Argentine is up 4-3 in the fourth quarter and that he has to give up a good handful of runs because the effort will be in vain, useless. He proceeds intelligence and good hand. So he takes refuge in that small imaginary trench at the bottom and pulls time and time again with his compass, his directions and his guts, with all the greatness that surrounds a career full of plot twists and triumphs in the face of vicissitudes. There is a scramble when he loses one foot and falls over against his will. “Well done, supervisor, well done! “It’s not slippery or dangerous, of course!” He protests again, looking at the man and showing his thumbs up, ironically. Then he falls break (4-4) and the opponent, already shivering, is faced with an army of history, the 24 greats, the endless list of records and all those episodes in which Djokovic managed to escape the flames.
“Let’s go with everything, che“Come on, come on!”, they encourage Cerúndolo from the bench, knowing that now it is their boy who is destined to fall to the depths, truly lost because Djokovic, the same Djokovic who two nights before had saved his neck against Lorenzo Musetti, at three in the morning, after 4h 29m and also in five sets, gets bigger and makes the plane after a circus maneuver on the net, stretching, opening his legs, cushioning the ball and already heading into the quarterfinals against Casper Ruud (7-6(6), 3-6, 6-4 and 6-2 to Taylor Fritz). Victorious, but brief, the one from Belgrade says goodbye to the headquarters, addressing the stands in French. “How did you do it?” asks Mats Wilander. “It’s exactly the same thing that Àlex Corretja asked me on Saturday,” answers the defending champion, the Houdini of the racket. Incredible but true: he has done it again. From resurrection to resurrection. “Like the other day, this victory is yours. “I don’t know very well what happened, the only explanation I can find for winning is because of you.”
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