There are all sorts of perks to being tennis’s centre of gravity, the resident of the rankings penthouse, the figure on the top line of every draw sheet. For one thing, winning never loses its savour. Success is its own reward, especially in competitive sport.
Besides that, the top player – and only the top player – experiences that aura of walking into a locker room each time knowing he is the man to beat. Yes, there are also the material trappings of being the World No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, with the endorsements and the celebrity opportunity and the income.
And yet, as the cliché goes, one can be the loneliest number. It can be solitary and secluded at the top. And there are other drawbacks to being the best. The top spot comes with a level of scrutiny that can be uncomfortable or, at a minimum, takes getting used to. There’s the pressure that comes from knowing that, as the top seed at each tournament, the best you can do is to fulfill expectation, to ‘hold court’ as it were. Everyone else in the draw can ascend; if all goes according to plan, you will uphold the status quo. Otherwise you will be upset, a term of art, but also one to be taken literally. Perhaps, above all, it’s easy to fall prey to the dizzyingly high expectation you yourself have set, easy to fall victim to your own standards of success.
Which bring us to Novak Djokovic. For an 18-month period, starting in 2015 and continuing through the midway point of 2016, Djokovic treated the rest of the field as a personal chew toy. He won tournaments by the lorry load, almost as a matter of routine. Not just majors – and he won five out of six of those in this gilded interval – but darn near every event he entered. As Andy Roddick, the former World No. 1, put it succinctly earlier this year: “It’s basically Novak’s world and everyone else is living in it, playing for second place.” Djokovic’s elite status was evident at Roland Garros where a first title made him only the eighth man in history to complete the career Grand Slam.
That as a backdrop, when Djokovic’s pace of winning slowed a bit this summer, it was treated as a crisis. A third-round loss at Wimbledon was coupled with a first-round defeat at the Olympics and an injury-addled loss in the US Open final. By the autumn, Andy Murray had undertaken a full-on siege for Djokovic’s top ranking spot, and earlier this month Murray moved above him in the Emirates ATP Rankings.
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For the first time since the summer of 2014, Djokovic isn’t the No. 1 and “What’s wrong with Novak?” has become a bit of a parlour game in tennis circles. In truth, this is akin to, say, questioning the value of Google for ‘only’ posting double-digit stock gains. Even with a bit of a summer swoon – again, by his dizzyingly high standards – Djokovic is turning in one of the great seasons in tennis history. And should he win a fifth successive title at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London this month, to add to his 2008 triumph in Shanghai, he would not only tie Roger Federer’s mark of six year-end trophies, but Djokovic would garnish another season of supreme tennis. This week could even see Djokovic returning to No. 1. “I take pride,” he has said, “in finishing the season still playing at a high level.”
Djokovic has also taken pride in exhibiting balance, a perspective that enables him “not to get too high or too low during a match”, as he puts it. But also to take the inevitable nodes and crests of a career with perspective, a position that has come in handy these past few months.
As he told me earlier this season: “There were days and periods of my career when I went through a lot of doubtful moments. But you overcome those moments with the help of people around you – I think it’s very important that you surround yourself with positive people. People who are wise, who care about you, care about your career, care about you living your dreams. Then you try to take the best out of those moments and learn, rather than thinking you are not good enough. Of course, I went through those moments when I was thinking I’m not good enough. I had doubts whether or not I could become No. 1 and challenge Nadal and Federer, who were so dominant. But, it was a process of growing up and really maturing in every aspect of my being and my tennis career as well.”
That’s putting it gently. And along with success, Djokovic has embraced his role as a leader for the sport. At tournaments, he’ll lead kids’ clinics and greet wheelchair players as they leave the court and is often a fixture in the players’ lounge. So, too, he is unburdened by his celebrity, creating the smallest of buffer zones between himself and the public. From Miami to Madrid, countless fans do a double take and ask themselves, “Hey, wait, wasn’t that…?” and the answer was, almost assuredly, “Yes.” There was Djokovic, the day before the tournament, riding a bike through downtown streets. Eating al fresco in South Beach. Even spotted using a cashpoint – either odd or fitting for a man who earlier this year eclipsed $100 million in career prize money.
Djokovic is most prominent, though, on the stadium court. The Djokovic thumbnail: This is a player who wins by not losing, who excels in unsexy gerunds like returning and defending and neutralising and outlasting. He doesn’t get sufficient credit for power, aggression and risk tolerance. He also doesn’t get sufficient credit for the way he carries himself. Asked earlier this year about his superiority, he says, “I don’t want to allow myself to be in that frame of mind. The person who becomes too arrogant or thinks he’s a higher being or better than everybody else? You can get a big slap from karma very soon. And I don’t want that.”
