Novak Djokovic reached the top of the tennis mountain on Sunday, dominating Casper Ruud in straight sets to win the French Open men’s singles title for the third time and more.
With the most memorable championship of his remarkable career to date, Djokovic has laid claim to the greatest male tennis player in history, with a record 23 Grand Slam tournament titles.
Djokovic defeated Ruud 7-6(1), 6-3, 7-5. On his second match point, Djokovic forced Ruud to a final forehand off the field and collapsed onto his back. He then knelt in prayer in the middle of the field and walked to the stands to hug his family and his coaches.
“I feel I have the power to determine my own destiny,” Djokovic said from the podium during the trophy celebration. “If you want a better future, you can create it.”
Tournament after tournament, Djokovic has spent most of the past two decades chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the two other giants who defined this era of modern tennis. That race is over, at least for now.
Djokovic, 36, surpassed the retired Federer last summer, on Wimbledon’s Center Court on the turf Federer ruled for so long, when he won his 21st Grand Slam singles title. In January at the Australian Open, Djokovic won again. That 22nd title tied Nadal, who missed this year’s French Open with an injury.
On Sunday, with a horde of fans waving Serbian flags and chanting his name and a cast of stars in attendance for the occasion, he won again, this time for the record books.
Retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady sat next to Jelena, Djokovic’s wife. French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a few rows above the pitch. American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, tennis icons Yannick Noah and Stan Smith and many French actors, singers, businessmen and sportsmen were also in the stands.
Djokovic did it on the red clay of the Philippe Chatrier field during the French Open, which Nadal won no less than 14 times. A silver statue of the Spanish champion hovering his forehand is only hundreds of meters away.
Djokovic’s journey has been anything but smooth. It’s filled with one self-inflicted crisis after another, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the field, early and midcareer fallow seasons, some because he was injured, and some when he had to miss tournaments because he didn’t want to give up his principles . His most seemingly impossible task is to win the hearts of tennis fans they long ago pledged to the first two members of the so-called Big Three.
Then there was the simple question of math. At the end of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 and took part in his first major tournament five years ago, Federer had already won 16 Grand Slam titles alongside Djokovic’s. Any suggestion that Djokovic would one day get Federer, or even Nadal, who had nine, would have been absurd.
But when 2011 came, Djokovic took the sport by storm, winning the Australian and US Opens and Wimbledon that year. He put together a 41-game winning streak and a 10-1 record against Federer and Nadal. Tennis has never been the same.
There is no single explanation for what has happened since then. A new, strict gluten-free diet, giving up alcohol, and experimenting with spending time in a pressurized, egg-shaped room have all gotten their fair share of credit. So does a stretching and gymnastics routine that Djokovic has turned into a racket-wielding rubber band, which likely helps limit his injuries.
The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder that Djokovic says he has carried since childhood during the war in Serbia doesn’t hurt either.
Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic’s current coach, who is a Croat, has described in Djokovic’s DNA a fighting spirit in the Balkans that no one from outside the region can match.
Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for three years, said that during a period when Djokovic lost a series of Grand Slam finals, he punished himself for a rashness that neither Djokovic nor Becker ever spoke of in detail. Becker said Djokovic learned to forgive himself, and once he did, he was set free and started winning with abandon.
The numbers since then defy simple explanation. With his victory on Sunday, Djokovic recaptured the world top for a record 388 weeks. In addition to holding the record for Grand Slam tournament titles, he also holds the record for Masters 1000 titles, and in case Nadal or Federer fans want to accuse him of being just a compiler, Djokovic has a winning record against both Nadal and Federer . .
Any hope Ruud, 24, a stable and determined Norwegian playing in his third Grand Slam final in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into anything other than a coronation was dashed at the end of a grueling first-set battle that finished in Djokovic’s trademark fashion.
“It’s hard to explain how good you are,” Ruud said to his competitor afterwards.
Andy Roddick, a former world number 1, famously said of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”
That was about what Djokovic did with Ruud early on Sunday, on his way to history.
History said that if Ruud had any chance of winning, he should win the first set. In all those years and hundreds of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has only lost five times after winning the first set.
Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to start the match and took an early lead as Djokovic played a shaky first match, playing overhand and pushing forehands and backhands off the pitch as Ruud played the largely flawless and deceptively dangerous tennis that characterized the best moments. of his career.
But then came the Djokovic whom the tennis world has come to know and fear for the past twelve years. With Ruud serving at 4-2, close enough to smell the first set finish line, Djokovic surrendered to one of those classic grinding rallies where he runs from corner to corner, front and back, and the point alive long after it should have been. about. It ended as so often: with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the net.
Ruud would get close again and come within two points of that set through the power of a back-running lob between the legs. But Djokovic brushed off that threat with a dozen shots over the next four points.
In most tennis matches, when a set goes to a tiebreak, the outcome is similar to the flip of a coin. It doesn’t work that way with Djokovic, not on Sunday, not this whole tournament, and rarely on the biggest stages during this most recent streak of mid-thirties dominance.
It’s not an accident. Last week, he explained that when a tiebreaker kicks in, his mind goes into a state of hyper-focus as he uses everything at his disposal to “stay in the present,” as he describes it, playing every point to its credit .
He started this one with a forehand winner down the line, then finished it seven points later with another great forehand that Ruud didn’t even bother with, not that it would have made a difference. When it was over, Djokovic had played 55 points in tiebreaks throughout this tournament and was yet to commit an unforced error.
For 1 hour and 22 minutes, Ruud had been face-to-face with Djokovic, sprint for sprint and shot for shot over long distances, and he had nothing but a rubbery set of legs and a damaged psyche to show. Ruud stuck around for the scrap, something he hasn’t always done, pushing the match past the three-hour mark, whipping up the crowd to a spirited wave of the third set and dueling chants of “NOVAK, NOVAK” and “RUUUUUUUUD.” But after that first set it was only a matter of time.
Ruud has now played 11 sets against Djokovic in five matches and lost them all.
In the fog of all this winning, it can be hard to remember the fights, even the more recent ones. There were days in custody in Australia last year as he awaited his deportation hearing. But there was also that ugly time in 2020 when he accidentally hit a ball down a linesman’s throat and was thrown out of the US Open. The following month, Nadal destroyed him in straight sets in a postponed French Open final. Djokovic seemed on his way to another walk in the wilderness.
Instead, he came within one game of winning all four Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, knocking out Nadal at Roland Garros.
He has already won the first two this year. Even after 23 Grand Slam titles, there is still more history to write.