Novak Djokovic had nothing left to conquer.
He hoisted every trophy professional tennis had to offer him. He won every Grand Slam tournament at least three times for a record total of 24 championships. He held the No. 1 ranking in the Association of Tennis Professionals for a record 428 weeks, or just over eight years, and was the oldest player ever to hold that position. He won the ATP Tour Finals a record eight times, defeated top-five players a record 123 times, and beat every opponent he thought he could beat someday.
With no trophies to hoist and no statistics to boast, Djokovic was missing a simple accessory around his neck more commonly seen on swimmers than tennis players: an Olympic gold medal. It was something that greats like Andre Agassi, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal never managed to get their hands on, and it was the only medal any other male tennis player could boast if they beat him.
It was almost certain that Djokovic was the greatest men’s tennis player of all time, and now it’s a fact. On Sunday, he finally beat Carlos Alcaraz to win Olympic gold, just as he won everything else the sport has given him. This toppled the last statistical barrier to the Serbian maestro’s absolute claim to being the greatest player of all time, but it’s unlikely to slow him down. When asked if he would defend his gold medal four years later, at age 41, Djokovic replied: Convened The only answer that makes sense.
“I would love to play in Los Angeles in 2028.”
Djokovic will also be competing in the US Open at the end of August, where he plans to defend his title. But why continue when there is nothing else to conquer, when no one else can come close to the scale and grandeur of his achievements? At 37 years old, Djokovic has already proven everything, said everything, and won everything. The debate over whether another player is the greatest of all time is no longer relevant. Why remain the king of men’s tennis when everyone else is already ahead?
Because for Novak Djokovic, tyranny is the name of the game and imagination is the only limit.
An Olympic gold medal holds a special place in tennis. Although it is not one of the four Grand Slam tournaments, it is even harder to win for the best players. Only a few players, both men and women, have achieved the “Career Golden Slam” of winning all four Grand Slam tournaments and an Olympic gold medal. It is harder to win than the other big prizes because it only happens once every four years, and the courts and formats change.
But Djokovic wanted it so badly. It was the only blemish anyone could find on his illustrious tournament record. One bronze medal in a 20-plus year tennis career? Surely the men’s champion could do better than that. And not even Carlos Alcaraz, who thought he’d broken Djokovic’s formula by beating him in the past two Grand Slam finals, could stop him.
Djokovic is a mad competitor, dedicated to perfecting himself and thoroughly beating his opponents. Of the legendary “Big Three” of men’s tennis – Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer – only Djokovic excelled at conquering all types of opponents. Federer struggled against powerful serves throughout his career, and Nadal was not as good on grass as he was on clay.
But Djokovic always understood that. With a supercomputer brain hard-coded to win tennis matches, Djokovic always took advantage of the one thing that could beat his opponent, even if it was just that one thing. In navigating his long, complicated Olympic final against Alcaraz, Djokovic forced decisions at the net at key moments, perhaps the lone inexperience of Alcaraz in an otherwise flawless game.
As he has done so many times before, Djokovic pulled the Spaniard out of a fairly comfortable position and put him in a position where he could actually lose. Unable to break Alcaraz’s serve even once, Djokovic forced two tiebreaks, forcing his opponent to play flawlessly, with each unforced error affecting the entire game and correctly betting that he would win the perfect battle.
Djokovic never hit the hardest forehand, he never generated the most topspin or hit the fastest serve in the game — he lacked the weapons of mass destruction that other top players relied on — but he was always the most accurate, most often, which made him nearly impossible to beat.
As crucial to Djokovic’s success (at least in his own words) is how he manages his physique. He’s a fitness-obsessive, and perhaps the secret to his longevity is his constant pursuit of physical perfection. In the book about his vegan diet and legendary training philosophy, nothing is more memorable than this story he told after beating Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open final. One of the greatest people in history.
“I had only one wish: to taste chocolate. I hadn’t tasted chocolate since the summer of 2010.” [Amanovic] “I brought a candy bar, broke off a little square, put it in my mouth and let it melt on my tongue,” Djokovic said. I have written“That’s all I allowed myself to do. That’s what it took to be number one.”
The obsession with controlling one’s body can also manifest itself in problematic ways, such as: Very public “His refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine resulted in him voluntarily missing a major tournament. This selfish behavior was as deplorable and unscientific as his anti-vaccine rhetoric, but it was consistent with his own obsession with control over what goes into and out of his body. Greatness is an obsession, and sometimes obsessions can manifest in unhealthy ways.
And despite willfully missing out on many Grand Slam tournaments, Djokovic still sits in the lead for most appearances. Combined with his other achievements, his case for being the greatest men’s tennis player of all time is nearly complete. But why “all of them”?
because perhaps There’s just one thing left for him to overcome, but don’t get your hopes up – it’s probably impossible.
In the history of professional men’s tennis, only one player has ever won the Calendar Grand Slam — all four Grand Slam tournaments in one year — Australia’s Rod Laver did it in 1969, and no one has done it since: not Nadal, not Federer, not Djokovic. Because the Calendar Grand Slam is considered so difficult to achieve, it doesn’t usually make it onto lists of career accomplishments like an Olympic gold medal. It’s unrealistic at the modern level of competition, but of all the modern-day losers, Djokovic came that close by a lot.
He had a good run of success, winning three of the four Grand Slam tournaments in 2015, 2021 and 2023, and reaching the final of the fourth one. However, he only played in the last major tournament of the year, the US Open, in 2021, having won the other three tournaments, so the eventual winner, Daniil Medvedev, declared war on Djokovic and won.
“We are here to stop him from winning the U.S. Open,” Medvedev said before the 2021 tournament. And that is exactly what he did.
Why couldn’t Djokovic have done it sooner, when he was at the peak of his physical fitness? It’s true that Nadal and Federer have made it hard for Djokovic on clay and grass, but the irony is that Djokovic’s loss at the 2015 French Open came at the hand of Stan Wawrinka, a historic anomaly in the long history of Nadal’s dominance in Paris.
Djokovic may have faltered or simply been unlucky, but time may not be on his side, as the margin for error in a calendar Grand Slam is extremely slim and it is unlikely that an improved Carlos Alcaraz could lose two hard-court tournaments in one year. But it is true that Djokovic sees in Laver a player who has something he does not, and that may make his competitive spirit flare with anxiety. And it is unlikely that he will sit back and accept it.
Either way, Djokovic’s superpower has always been to figure it out, no matter how unlikely. Now that there’s no actual trophy to chase, and age is starting to catch up with Djokovic and his body, maybe it’s time to attempt the impossible. If it’s in his head, it will start at the Australian Open in January.
The Olympic gold medal cemented what most tennis fans already knew, but Djokovic himself likely isn’t interested in cementing himself as GOAT. What matters to him is winning. Winning everything and winning often. Never being satisfied. Never giving up, no matter how good or bad the opponent is, no matter how redundant it all seems. Keep attacking, keep dominating, keep defining the direction of men’s tennis until the strings snap.
It’s nearly impossible to imagine him reaching greater heights, and yet it feels almost inevitable, because we know he’s already imagined it.
