Turns out the only man who can beat Djokovic this season is himself | Novak Djokovic

A The US Open is sure to be remembered for oddities like empty stadiums, social distancing and bubbles within bubbles took its strangest detour yet on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Queens when Novak Djokovic, the world’s best player and first favorite in the draw. male, was breached. of his fourth round match with Spaniard Pablo Carreño Busta after accidentally hitting a linesman in the throat with a hit ball in a bad mood.

The expulsion of the crash was, as USTA statement It was quickly clarified, the correct decision regardless of Djokovic’s intention, and one that has further shaken a tournament already compromised by absent starters and watered-down fields. We may be done with 2020, but 2020 is not done with us.

The World No. 1 quietly fled the grounds without pressuring the press, though he later apologized, his bid for a major 18th title in shambles along with his perfect 26-game record to start the season. It turns out that the only man who could beat Djokovic this year was Djokovic himself.

If there was a silver lining for the organizers, it was perhaps that Sunday’s abrupt final act was played in an Arthur Ashe stadium dotted with a few dozen players and officials and not 23,000 well-lubricated spectators denied a long-lasting attraction. after shelling out for Labor Day weekend tickets that regularly sell for hundreds above face value on the secondary market. One can only imagine a scene fueled by long-standing antipathy between Djokovic and the New York crowd, a problem dating back more than a decade to a time when she was fighting a reputation as a melting drama queen. under pressure and acted decisively. We say liberal approach to the medical wait time rule.

In 2008, Djokovic didn’t take it kindly when Andy Roddick sarcastically recited a long list of illnesses during a press conference before their third-round showdown, suggesting “bird flu,” “anthrax,” and “Sars” as potential futures. excuses to be given by the Serbian. After humiliating the top-ranked American in a match in which his failures and mistakes in service were met with cheers, Djokovic provoked the crowd during an on-court interview until a handful of boos turned into a cacophony. The cold relationships have never thawed, even after he won the tournament in 2011, 2015 and 2018.

So there is little doubt that the US Open avoided what may have been an ugly spectacle. But what it means for Djokovic to move on, at least beyond his devoted fanbase, is less certain.

For one thing, this isn’t the first time that Djokovic’s pattern of reckless behavior on the court has been questioned. In the 2016 French Open quarterfinals, he admitted that he was “lucky” not to hit a nearby linesman. when his racket flew from his hand as he went to crush him to the ground. Then a few months later, at the ATP final in London, Djokovic he snapped at a reporter who suggested that he nearly hit a spectator when he threw a ball in the direction of his players’ area.

“You guys are amazing,” he said at the time. “Because you are always choosing this kind of thing. Am I the only player showing his frustration on the court? Is that what you are saying? It is not a problem for me. This is not the first time I do it.

“Could have been [serious]yeah It could also have snowed at the O2 Arena, but it didn’t. “

But Sunday’s breach also comes at the end of the summer, where Djokovic’s reputation has taken a hit, amid the amplification of anti-vaxxing conspiracies as he hands over his global platform to various snake oil sellers, not to mention his disastrous experiment. Adria Tour in June, which to many came out as a flat denial of the coronavirus at the height of the global outbreak. A lengthy damage control exercise has been conducted in the months since, the fingerprints of which were evident in his deeply contrite statement issued Sunday night.

The Serbian’s departure not only secures a first-time Grand Slam champion in the men’s tournament at Flushing Meadows, but it will also mark the first major tournament without Djokovic, Federer or Nadal in the last four since the 2004 French Open. what was needed was a global pandemic and Sunday’s denouement.

Djokovic remains to many outsiders: the third man to disrupt the beloved Federer-Nadal duopoly, which unapologetically exists outside of the American / Western European establishment of the sport. Ever since Ivan Lendl, an all-time great, he didn’t seem so unloved beyond his main followers.

Through ruthless dominance, Djokovic has become the Floyd Mayweather of his sport with no criminal record: a league champion above his rivals who rules with technical brilliance that critics degrade as mechanical and boring. And like Mayweather, he has shown that he is clearly willing to accept the role of villain when it is imposed on him and has demonstrated time and again the ability to feed off negative energy.

But episodes like Sunday’s, unfortunate as they are, do raise a certain Balotellian question when it comes to Djokovic. Why always him? That it doesn’t have an easy answer, after so long, doesn’t make it any less worthy of inspection.