Novak Djokovic reached the high of the tennis mountain on Sunday, dominating Casper Ruud in straight units to win the French Open males’s singles title for a third time and a lot extra.
With the most momentous championship of his outstanding profession up to now, Djokovic has staked his declare to being the best male tennis participant in historical past, with a report 23 Grand Slam event singles titles.
Djokovic defeated Ruud, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5. On his second match level, Djokovic induced Ruud into a last forehand off the courtroom and collapsed on his again. He then knelt in prayer in the center of the courtroom and headed for the stands to embrace his household and his coaches.
“I feel I have the power to create my own destiny,” Djokovic mentioned from the podium throughout the trophy celebration. “If you want the better future you can create it.”
Tournament after event, Djokovic has spent most of the final twenty years chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the two different giants who’ve outlined this period of recent tennis. That race has come to an finish, at the very least for now.
Djokovic, 36, surpassed the retired Federer final summer season, at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on the grass that Federer had dominated for therefore lengthy, when he received his twenty first Grand Slam title. In January at the Australian Open, Djokovic received once more. That twenty second title tied Nadal, who missed this yr’s French Open with an harm.
On Sunday, with a horde of followers waving Serbian flags and chanting his identify and a forged of stars readily available for the event, he received once more, this time for the report books.
The retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady sat subsequent to Jelena, Djokovic’s spouse. The French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a few rows above the courtroom. The American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the tennis icons Yannick Noah and Stan Smith and many French actors, singers, businessmen and athletes have been additionally in the stands.
Djokovic did it on the pink clay of the Philippe Chatrier courtroom at the French Open, which Nadal has received an astonishing 14 instances. A silver statue of the Spanish champion bullwhipping his forehand stands simply a whole bunch of yards away.
Djokovic’s journey has been something however clean. It has been crammed with one self-inflicted disaster after one other, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the courtroom, early and midcareer fallow seasons, some as a result of he was injured, and some when he was pressured to overlook tournaments as a result of he wouldn’t waiver from his rules. His most seemingly not possible activity has been profitable the hearts of tennis followers who way back pledged them to the first two members of the so-called Big Three.
Beyond that, there was the easy matter of math. At the finish of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 and 5 years previous competing in his first main event, Federer had already received 16 Grand Slam titles to Djokovic’s one. Any suggestion that Djokovic would possibly someday catch Federer, and even Nadal, who had 9, would have been absurd.
But then 2011 dawned, Djokovic stormed the sport, profitable the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon that yr. He put collectively a 41-match profitable streak and a 10-1 report in opposition to Federer and Nadal. Tennis has by no means been the similar.
There is nobody clarification for what has transpired since. A brand new, strictly gluten-free eating regimen, giving up alcohol and experimentation with spending time in a pressurized, egg-shaped chamber have all gotten their share of credit score alongside the method. So has a stretching and calisthenics routine that has turned Djokovic into a racket-wielding rubber band, probably serving to to restrict his accidents.
The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder that Djokovic has mentioned he has carried since his childhood rising up throughout the battle in Serbia hasn’t damage both.
Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic’s present coach, who’s a Croat, has described a Balkan combating spirit in Djokovic’s DNA that nobody who has come from exterior the area can match.
Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for 3 years, mentioned that in one interval when Djokovic misplaced a sequence of Grand Slam finals, he was punishing himself for an indiscretion that neither Djokovic not Becker has ever talked about intimately. Becker mentioned Djokovic discovered to forgive himself, and as soon as he did that he grew to become liberated, and started profitable with abandon.
The numbers since then defy easy clarification. With his win Sunday, Djokovic regained the world’s high rating for a report 388th week. In addition to the report for Grand Slam event titles, he additionally holds the report for Masters 1000 titles, and simply in case any Nadal or Federer followers needed to fault him for being a mere compiler, Djokovic has a profitable report in opposition to each Nadal and Federer.
Any hope that Ruud, 24, a regular and decided Norwegian enjoying in his third Grand Slam last in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into one thing apart from a coronation dissipated at the finish of a grinding first-set battle that concluded in Djokovic’s signature trend.
“It’s tough to explain how good you are,” Ruud mentioned to his competitor after the match.
Andy Roddick, a former world No. 1, famously mentioned of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”
That was about what Djokovic did to Ruud early on Sunday, on his option to historical past.
History mentioned if Ruud had any probability of prevailing he must win the first set. Across all these years and a whole bunch of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has misplaced solely 5 instances after profitable the first set.
Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to begin the match and surged to an early lead as Djokovic performed a shaky first sport, muffing overheads and pushing forehands and backhands off the courtroom as Ruud performed the largely error-free and deceptively harmful tennis that has characterised the greatest moments of his profession.
But then the Djokovic that the tennis world has come to know and concern the previous dozen years emerged. With Ruud serving at 4-2, shut sufficient to smell the first-set end line, Djokovic indulged in a type of traditional grinding rallies, the place he runs from nook to nook, ahead and again, preserving the level alive lengthy after it ought to be over. It ended the method it so usually does — with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the web.
Ruud would come shut another time, coming inside two factors of taking that set on the power of a backward-running, between-the-legs lob. But Djokovic erased that risk with about a dozen pictures over the subsequent 4 factors.
In most tennis matches, when a set strikes to a tiebreaker the consequence is akin to the flip of a coin. That shouldn’t be the way it works with Djokovic, not Sunday, not this complete event, and not often on the greatest phases throughout this most up-to-date run of mid-30s dominance.
It’s not an accident. Last week, he defined that when a tiebreaker begins, his thoughts strikes to state of hyper-concentration as he makes use of every thing at his disposal to “stay in the present,” as he describes it, and play every level on its benefit.
He began this one with a lunging forehand winner down the line, and completed it seven factors later with one other blasted forehand that Ruud didn’t even hassle making a run at, not that it might have made a distinction. When it was over, Djokovic had performed 55 factors in tiebreakers throughout this event and had but to make an unforced error.
For 1 hour 22 minutes, Ruud had gone toe to toe with Djokovic, matching him dash for dash and shot for shot for lengthy stretches, and he had nothing however a rubbery set of legs and a broken psyche to point out for it. Ruud caught round for the scrap, one thing he has not all the time completed, pushing the match previous the three-hour mark, rousing the crowd into a spirited third-set wave and dueling chants of “NOVAK, NOVAK,” and “RUUUUUUUUD.” But after that first set it was simply a matter of time.
Ruud has now performed 11 units in opposition to Djokovic in 5 matches and misplaced each one.
In the fog of all this profitable, it may be troublesome to recollect the stretches of strife, even the newer ones. There have been these days in custody in Australia final yr as he awaited his deportation listening to. But there was additionally that ugly time in 2021, when he by accident swatted a ball into the throat of a line decide and was tossed out of the U.S. Open. The subsequent month, Nadal destroyed him in straight units in a delayed French Open last. Djokovic appeared headed for one more stroll in the wilderness.
Instead, he got here inside one match of profitable all 4 Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, toppling Nadal at Roland Garros alongside the method.
He has received the first two already this yr. Even after 23 Grand Slam titles, there may be extra historical past to be made.
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