Djokovic is not there, but the rest awaits him: “I know what I am capable of”

While Carlos Alcaraz is going on a full-blown binge against JJ Wolf, with his biggest win in a major (6-1, 6-2 and 6-1, in 1h 51m), Novak Djokovic is chatting in the conference room as if he would have ingested an overdose of valerian, recalling the tone of those times when the Serb, a special type, spiritually left for who knows where and took almost two years to return. Now, at Roland Garros, everyone is wondering where the hell Nole has gotten himself, if things are as they seem and the setbacks of recent times respond to a more or less lasting downturn, or if he has prepared one of theirs and another one of those coups d’effect is brewing. Nobody trusts him, master of the resurrection.

“That means how bad we are at seeing him win everything,” says Alcaraz, also surprised by the Balkan’s poor succession of results this season, for now without titles and leaving a good trail of doubts along the way. “That he hasn’t won anything before coming here is super, super strange,” says the Murcian, “but I always say and think that, even if it doesn’t come the way he wants, Djokovic has the ability to win the tournament perfectly, playing it at a stratospheric level. So you always have to keep it in your sights, you have to be careful with it. Let’s see, but I still think that he will always be on the list of top”.

Meanwhile, the Serbian, just turned 37, describes exactly how he arrived in Paris, after a last slip against the Czech Thomas Machac in the Geneva preparatory, an event he signed up for at the last minute in an attempt to catch the race. the sensations that have been denied until now: “With low expectations and high hopes.” He trusts number one that his tennis will rebound at the moment of truth, now that he has before him the delicious delicacy of another majortaking into account that for him, the rest of the commitments have begun to become a tedium devoid of stimuli: greatness or nothing.

Today, even the Masters 1000 have become a procedure for Nole, who competes exclusively for the highest goals, that is, the Grand Slams and that Olympic gold that eludes him and that will be settled on this same stage within a few months. “I’m almost a little embarrassed to say what my expectations are. Anything other than a title is not satisfactory to me. It may sound arrogant to many people, but I think I have a career that backs it up,” says the still king of the circuit, whose mandate is in danger at this Roland Garros, where the Italian Jannik Sinner can take it from him. However, he confides: “I know what I am capable of, and particularly in these types of tournaments I usually play my best tennis; I was able to do that many times.”

Decompression and skepticism

He says that the big ones are another story and that he knows exactly what he must do to get the compass back. However, the image of the last five months is disturbing, and not so much because of not having won anything at this point – a circumstance that only occurred in 2018 – as because of the deficit in play. Djokovic seems not to be there, but he warns – “I know what I have to do, I want to reach my peak here, just like last year” – and the others are suspicious in chorus. After all, there is no need to go back too far. Last year they were crowned for the third time in Paris after a discreet process in which they fell in the second round in Monte Carlo, the second in Banja Luka and the quarterfinals in Rome; but then he emerged in style.

“There are several things that were happening in the last few months, but I don’t want to get into that. I hope you understand. “I just don’t want to open Pandora’s box and talk about it,” he says, aware that this year’s decompression invites skepticism and fuels voices that suggest that perhaps it is due to a lack of motivation, since He has managed to win the race to be the most successful in history and has also proven to be capable of punishing the new tennis government. Now, he says, the priority is family. “Since it is daytime, I have more obligations, but I will try. “Everyone will want to see what is going to happen,” he answers when asked if the duel between Rafael Nadal and the German Alexander Zverev will continue.

The spotlight is on the Mallorcan, but the Serbian remembers that he knows the way back like few others. He sank to the depths a couple of times, but he always emerged stronger and ended up recovering that flame that has propelled him to almost all the records there have been and ever were. In any case, the present generates reasonable doubt, while there is speculation from the outside and the bulk of the adversaries await another hypothetical uprising. “I had to find a new beginning, so to speak, and I did; in some cases before and in others a little later, but I managed to find the right game, the right mentality,” he says, while everyone is wondering: this Nole today, reality or bluff?

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