Novak Djokovic did not mince words in criticizing his own performance following his shocking exit in the United States Open. It wasn’t simply that he had his worst showing at Flushing Meadows since 2006. It was that he bowed out in a whimper; his four-set defeat at the hands of 28th seed Alexei Popyrin was a master class in how not to compete against an opponent he had already beaten in three previous meetings. “It was just an awful match for me. I wasn’t playing even close to my best.” Talk about an understatement.
The irony, of course, was that Djokovic arrived at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in high spirits. He had just come off a successful run at the Paris Games, thereby cementing his status as the best of the best of all time. And, outside of the momentum he generated as a result, he was at his fittest for the year. The torn meniscus in his right knee that required him to go under the knife in late June was fully healed, and he appeared confident in his chances to take a record 25th Grand Slam title.
Unfortunately, Djokovic came nowhere close to being at his best. Perhaps the truncated schedule also affected him the way it did Olympic silver medalist Carlos Alcaraz, who failed to survive the second round. As he explained in his post-mortem, “It’s not good to be in that kind of state where you feel okay physically, and of course you’re motivated because it’s a Grand Slam, but you just are not able to find your game.“ And he was on the mark; by the time he shook hands with Popyrin at the net, he had amassed a whopping 14 double faults along with a bevy of uncharacteristic missed shots.
In any case, the bout with futility has left Djokovic without a major this season. Interestingly, he last held an empty bag seven years ago, and seven years before that. To argue that the clock is ticking for him would be to highlight the obvious. If there’s anything his immediate past experience has showed, it’s that he has, at 37, become increasingly susceptible to the vagaries of Father Time. He’s now swimming against the current, and how much longer he can delay the inevitable remains to be seen.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
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