Djokovic, the tennis champion who finally has it all with Olympic gold
Novak Djokovic was on hands and knees on the red clay at Roland Garros: his hands shaking, his body trembling, his tears flowing.
It was the portrait of a man complete, a tennis champion who finally has it all at age 37.
“It definitely stands out as the biggest sporting achievement I’ve had because of all the circumstances and all the things along the journey that I had to face,” he said.
Across three decades, he has chased down the toughest rivals and the most meaningful records in the men’s game, winning 24 Grand Slam singles titles, seven season-ending ATP Finals and spending 428 weeks at No. 1.
He has won the Davis Cup for Serbia. He has won Monte Carlo, Rome, Indian Wells and every other Masters 1000 tournament not once but twice. He has answered questions about his staying power with his shotmaking and sliding defense and answered questions in the interview room in up to six languages.
All that had escaped him was an Olympic gold medal and though some of the other great champions of the Open era never had the chance or the burning desire to pursue that traditional prize, Djokovic has been all in.
Flash back to Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a crowded mixed zone, where he was sobbing in disappointment after losing in the first round of the Olympic men’s tournament to Juan Martin del Potro.
The Games mattered to him enormously and one of the many remarkable characteristics of Djokovic, a complex and iconoclastic champion, is that he is not afraid to show just how much his goals matter.
He does not protect himself, does not provide wiggle room to minimize defeat. He eyes the target, with stubble on his chin and a sometimes-haunted gaze, and searches for the zone required to reach that target.
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He got there on Sunday after a 16-year chase that began at the 2008 Games in Beijing, where he won a bronze medal in his debut. He got there in Paris by solving the biggest riddle available in men’s tennis: defeating 21-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish phenom who won the French Open on this same patch of clay in June and routed Djokovic just last month in the Wimbledon final.
Djokovic’s 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) victory in the gold-medal match stirred up emotions that he said he had never experienced. He sobbed uncontrollably on the clay and then broke down again after navigating his way through the crowd to reach his wife Jelena and their two young children in this familiar stadium, where he has won three French Open titles (after another lengthy quest) and now the Olympic singles gold.
The crowd, often not on his side at Roland Garros through the years, embraced his cause in earnest this time, chanting “Nole!” and roaring with approval as he completed the victory.
“I’m just over the moon honestly,” Djokovic said. “Everything that I felt in that moment when I won really surpassed everything I thought or hoped it is going to be. I thought that carrying the flag in the opening ceremony in 2012 was the best feeling ever until I experienced this today. Being on that court with the Serbian flag raising and singing the Serbian anthem and carrying that gold around my neck, I think nothing can beat that in terms of professional sports.”
Only two months ago, Djokovic withdrew from the French Open before the quarterfinals with a right knee injury and then underwent minor surgery in Paris to trim cartilage. He surprised specialists, including his French surgeon, by returning to action at Wimbledon but he did not return to top gear until the Olympics. He is the first man to win the singles title without dropping a set since tennis returned as a full medal sport to the Olympics in 1988.
“Obviously the injury that occurred here in Roland Garros sidetracked me a little bit,” he said. “But then coming into these Olympics Games I said I felt I am a different player compared to the player I was at Wimbledon in terms of how I moved and played and felt.
“I knew already in those opening two rounds, the way I was playing, that this was my chance. If it is ever going to be, it is going to be now.”
His breakthrough victory on Sunday was short form by his standards considering all the extended five-set emotional journeys he has had to navigate against Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and even Alcaraz in last year’s classic Wimbledon final. But Sunday’s victory was epic in a different manner and considering the stakes and the setting, it was one of the greatest two-set matches ever played.
Neither man managed to break serve: an extraordinary statistic in a clay-court final between two of the best returners in the game.
Alcaraz had eight break points; Djokovic had six. All but one of those 14 break points came in the first set, and Djokovic saved five of them in a single game at 4-4.
One distant day, when Alcaraz thinks back on this Olympic final with Djokovic long retired, the Spaniard’s thoughts will certainly flash back to those early opportunities to take control. He was a bit impatient, a bit impulsive, a bit edgy when he needed calm and precision most. The result was his first defeat in a significant final, although he is still 4-0 in Grand Slam finals.
“In the Grand Slams, in difficult moments I have given the best of myself,” Alcaraz said. “But today I found that difficult.”
Djokovic, true to his brand, resisted brilliantly, often boldly: coming forward despite the challenges that can create on a slow and gritty surface. He used serve-and-volley sparingly but effectively. He deployed Alcaraz’s specialty, the drop shot against the fastest man in the game.
But none of that is to imply that either finalist had a clear edge. This match was played on a tightrope as well as on clay with both men summoning excellence under duress off balance and on the stretch.
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Their last two encounters were anticlimactic with Djokovic winning in the ATP Finals last year and Alcaraz dominating last month's Wimbledon final. But this gold-medal match was a return to form for the best rivalry in tennis: a hyper-athletic, sometimes balletic intergenerational duel that is more contrast in ages than contrast in styles.
They can both do just about anything on a tennis court, save hit a single-handed backhand drive, and the unrelenting tension when both are on song comes from the suspense generated by their protean qualities.
If Alcaraz did make a tactical error (besides returning serve from a different postal code) it was allowing Djokovic the opportunity to decide the gold medal in tiebreakers, which are to Djokovic what primeval forest is to a wolf, his spirit animal.
Alcaraz has beaten him in tiebreakers: most memorably at Wimbledon the last two years. But Djokovic is now 335-171 in tiebreakers over the course of his career, and he was true to that glittering record on Sunday.
“In the tiebreakers, he raised his level, and I stayed the same or dropped,” Alcaraz said. “Those are the moments in which the great players raise their level, and I’ve got to get better at that. I will work on it so it won’t happen next time. But I have to congratulate Djokovic.”
Djokovic took command of the first-set tiebreaker at 3-3, winning the final four points and finishing it off with a lunging forehand drop volley winner.
He took command of the second-set tiebreaker at 2-2, roaming to his right and ripping a forehand crosscourt that even the elastic Alcaraz could not reach. Djokovic did not lose another point, locking in and winning the gold with a final full-cut forehand winner off a shot that landed deep in the court.
It was quite a finish, but then this was quite an achievement.
"Those other Olympic Games where I lost in the semifinals and wasn't able to bring a medal for many years to my country, that was catching up to me and building the pressure even more and more," he said. "So that's why where I am at this moment in my career and life, it stands out as the highest of the highest.”
It seemed, in every way, a full circle moment, but Djokovic made it clear repeatedly as he celebrated on Sunday that this was not an ending. He did not rule out playing in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, when he will be 41 years old.
“I don’t play this sport only to win the tournaments,” he said. “I play it because I really love the competition. I love the drive every day, every week of training my body and perfecting my game, improving myself still at this age. This sport has given me so much in my life, and I try to give back to the sport with the dedication and the sacrifice I put on the court every single day when nobody is watching. And I do it was as any young players out there in the world right now. These kinds of successes are not coincidences.”