Djokovic As Human Experience

During winter quarter, I went snowboarding at Tahoe for the first time; it was beautiful, and feeling that famed California powder, instead of the West Virginia ice I was used to, was exhilarating. Around noon, I was finishing up one of my best runs of the day; it was my first time snowboarding in years but I had picked it up pretty quickly and I was on a high gliding into the loading area. I started to brake, but misjudged how fast I was going and just ate shit, tumbling and landing directly on my left shoulder.

It got dislocated, and after popping it back in I found myself stuck in the place where you were supposed to soak in the victory over the mountain, but with a mouthful of powder and an umoving arm and a snowmobile coming to take me down to the hotel for an early lunch. Later that night, a few friends and I stayed up to watch the Australian Open Final. Djokovic and Nadal. Ani asked me, “You’re rooting for Nadal right?” “Nope! I like Djokovic.” He and Erik looked at me puzzled. “Really?”

The same thing happened in Italy, funnily enough. You see, cough cough WHEN I WAS STUDYING ABROAD IN ITALY cough cough, every night while we eat our lavish dinner with salad, pasta, wine, entree, fruit, and dessert we also keep the TV on while we each, so much so that they joke the TV is an extra member. Anyways, this ridiculous ass pasta commercial starring Roger Federer was on. My host mom went, “Ah, mi piace.” “Eh. Mi piace Djokovic.” loud tsk “Davvero?”

This past weekend, Djokovic won Wimbledon in one of the best tennis matches in recent history. While Djokovic has been the best player in the world for it seems like the past decade, the final was a nail-biter. Five sets, with Djokovic eking out a victory in a tiebreak after 24 games in the last set. By every conceivable measure, Federer played better: he won more games, more points, had more aces, won more break points, and was more effective with his first serve, his second serve, at the net, and even though Djokovic is widely considered the best returner in history, Federer won more receiving points, and at a higher rate. But at the end of the match, it was the wiry Serb who plucked the grass from the court and chewed while most everyone in the stadium, and in my Twitter feed, begrudingly clapped.

One of the common criticisms you see is that he’s boring to watch. He isn’t like Federer; he doesn’t glide on top of the court or make the ball slow down cinematically before he smack home a winner. He isn’t Nadal; he isn’t grunts, biceps, topspin, and loopy forehands. Watching Djokovic at the peak of his powers is like watching surgery on a grape; ruthlessly efficient, oddly satisfying, and inevitable. What makes him so good? He’s just phenomenal at doing the most basic thing in the game: hitting the ball back. Whenever I watch his matches, I find myself grabbing my hamstrings. Djokovic will go into a full split, robbing his opponent of a winner, and then somehow spring back up and cover the necessary distance to turn the point on its head. He distorts the geometry of the court, like an anaconda suffocating the other player. He can flip the switch like no other, transitioning between aggressive and defensive play on a whim. He feels like the John Wick of tennis, killing not with flair but with “sheer fucking will.” (that movie was super entertaining but like exceedingly dumb the script for the first one was straight garbo but it was funny in a dumb way)

There’s a blurb that Brian Phillips wrote about Djokovic that I think about a lot. It’s right after a set where he was demolished by Federer, and in a moment of rage he ripped his shirt before sitting on the bench, opening a tupperware, and quietly, seethingly eating a small gluten-free protein cube, right before he stormed back to ultimately win the match:

It was the way Djokovic did it, with a careful deliberateness totally at odds with his ongoing outburst of temper, that foretold the rest of the match. It said that his mind was running on two planes at once. It said that he was melting down, but also attending to detail. It was funny to watch — a man eating a protein cube in wrath — but also a little terrifying. Scream, but dot your i’s: That’s Djokovic’s version of mental strength in 2015. The machine can catch fire, but the machine keeps running.

(I love that line in bold. Jesus.)

I think Djokovic is one of most compelling athletes in the world; I first started rooting for him for pretty dumb reasons. Beyond wanting to be a lil edgy and getting tired of all the Federer worship (“I love the guy, don’t get me wrong… but what about this Serbian guy”), Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me used the fact he has a monopoly on the world’s supply of donkey cheese to bluff a listener, and after that I was hooked. There may be no other athlete so firmly in the running for the greatest of all time in their sport that elicits more apathy than Djokovic; in all likelihood, he will retire with the most Grand Slam victories of all time (4 slams behind Federer, four years younger, and he’s a vegan health nut so he will age WELL), he’s already the winningest player ever in terms of earnings, and he’s the only player in the modern era to hold all four major titles at once. You can argue that he has held his peak longer (aside from that weird injury blip in like 2014) and reached greater heights at his peak than Federer or Nadal, and yet no one is writing Djokovic as a Religious Experience (if you haven’t read this yet, read it! It’s DFW so it’ll be a bit pretentious but honestly if you could write like that… wouldn’t you be too?) Some deride his playstyle as boring, but unlike a Tim Duncan he has personality! He jokes around, does impressions of his peers, is cheeky with the camera, and owns the world supply of donkey cheese. He doesn’t fit into the trope of excellent asshole, a la Draymond Green or Tom Brady. So why isn’t he loved?

Tired: he came too late to the game, and ruined the two-party hegemony that Federer and Nadal had over tennis. We could’ve had two decades of Nadal-Federer finals, and this Serbian asshole comes in with his flexibility and veganism and a really nice backhand? Get him out.

Wired: Anti-eastern-European sentiment! American chauvinism! Tennis is a country club sport for the refined, not something a Serb can pick up playing on courts in Belgrade made netless by NATO bombings. This poor dares to overthrow our silky haired duopoly? Get him out.

But I think it’s something more fundamental to his personality, and something that makes him relatable, if not too relatable, as a star athlete in today’s world: he tries hard. He tries so, so hard.

Federer is effortless. He could have a glass of wine in between sets and it would fit in perfectly with his demeanor. He acts as if the world exists to applaud him (to be fair… it kinda does). Djokovic looks pained, frequently contorting his body into ridiculous positions. It is stressful to watch him and to watch him be stressed. Lauren Collins writes, “if many of his competitors reside in a county jail of their own making, Djokovic inhabits a supermax prison.” While Federer plays like a deity on some other plane, just knowing that after every stroke the crowd’s fixated on him, hands getting ready to clap, Djokovic feels more needy and human; you feel the sense that as you watch him, he returns your gaze, seeking approval.

I think today we like our heroes fully formed: we like to see prodigies become even more prodigious, an assurance that good things happen to good people and that even in this age of anxiety we’ll be okay. We like characters that are simple and broadly likable, because every day it seems like it turns out another person in a position of power that seemed okay is actually a dirtbag. Novak Djokovic does not fit this mold; he is a figure rife with contradiction. Genial yet arrogant, inevitable yet fragile, hot-tempered yet cool under pressure, dominant yet anxious. We keep him at a distance because he reminds us of ourselves in uncomfortable ways, the parts of us that we’d rather stow away. When I see Djokovic crack a smile as he approaches the net for the handshake after another dominant match, only to walk away from the court while his opponent is lauded by fans and commentators, I see the insecurities that have followed me around even as people tell me I’ve made it and that everything will be alright.

Can’t we all relate to that at some level? Can’t we all relate to the struggle of wanting to be liked by the people around us, always wondering but if I just win another tournament, maybe they’ll love me? Djokovic responds to these anxieties by seeking out agency: he notoriously micromanages almost every facet of his life, but he still can’t control the thing he wants and can’t get. I think to an extent he’s accepted it; after all, he does the cheeky grass chewy thing and has the smug little grin as he goes to shake hands at the net. It still remains something to be desired for him, but he’s built a healthier relationship around it and has managed to succeed spectacularly despite these things, and that’s what makes him so compelling for me: it’s unlikely that I’ll ever really shake off a sense of imposter syndrome (I am a living ablation test: I know the answer to the question “hey what if someone smarter than you grew up in the same family conditions and was afforded the same privileges? you think they’d accomplish a hell of a lot more than you would?”) or social anxiety, but in Djokovic I see something to strive towards.

In many ways, he reminds me of Kevin Durant; another absurdly efficient, all-time great revered as maybe the best player in the world, and yet still feels underappreciated. Both are men who want to be loved by the public, with Durant famously making burner Twitter accounts to defend himself against Twitter haters, who feel like microcosms of the modern age. Both have shaped the way their respective sports are played today, and yet operate in the shadows of a near-consensus GOAT still operating near the peak of their powers. While their legacies might not reach those of their more venerated peers, they’re far more interesting to think about: about how they built mental toughness from their fragility, and how they handle expectation to perform with anxiety and lack of support.

When I was watching the Australian Open Final with Erik and Ani, watching them grimace as Djokovic hit winner after winner, I thought about the approaching weeks: exams and psets, social anxiety about my upcoming quarter in Florence, a growing sense that I was slowly burning out, and all the small daily anxieties that come with just reading the news these days. After yet another one of his ridiculous returns, Erik exclaimed, “He just always hits it back!”

That’s the key, isn’t it?

Thoughts

okay this one was super hard to write. The thing about technical writing is it’s kind of easy bc you’re not really trying to be arty at all with language and there’s more of a natural progression of ideas, but after that behemoth of a post I wanted to go less technical. I wanted to not write about Italy but I think I will at some point? I’m worried I won’t have enough to say! I feel like my takes on Italy are pretty lukewarm and while that doesn’t like preclude me from writing about it, it makes it harder to write and it’s infinitely more likely that I’ll hate it when I’m writing it. ugh!!!

I think tennis is a really beautiful spectator sport and is generally fun to write about, and the donkey cheese thing is like one of my favorite bits of trivia ever. I thought it would be interesting to write more about people who succeed despite having super relatable issues (not like Donald Trump or Michael Jordan, who are textbook examples of bad people doing super well in America and whose character flaws are thankfully not super widespread in the population). I’ve been reading a lot of good tennis writing (DFW, Brian Phillips, Louisa Thomas, Chris Almeida), and I’ve tried to pick up on some of the things I liked.

In terms of shelf life, I’m hoping I won’t hate this after three months, but you never know! I’m trying to cut down on philosophizing (or however you spell that LOL can’t believe they put my dumb ass on a spell checking team at Facebook) cause I always end up sounding like some dumb child philosopher, and try to focus more on concrete things. I think I wanna write more anecdotal/reflective stuff, but honestly my life isn’t interesting enough to do that super frequently. I’ve always said my dream job is like that deal that some people have with the New Yorker where you kind of just like write two good things a week with few strings attached, but honestly that shit sounds so hard… content is tough. I’ll probably talk either about Italy or Seattle in my next one? toodles