Djokovic, Novak

Djokovic seized a spot in the French Open final with a win over a struggling Carlos Alcaraz. In the final on Sunday, Casper Ruud stands in the way of Djokovic’s 23rd Grand Slam singles title.The Philippe Chatrier Court at Roland Garros has long been Rafael Nadal’s second home.He has won 14 French Open men’s singles titles. His record at Roland Garros is 112-3, and a silver statue of him sits on the grounds.So maybe it’s fitting that Novak Djokovic has a chance for a career-crowning moment on Sunday — a 23rd Grand Slam singles title, one more than Nadal — on the very court where his rival has dominated this generation.If Djokovic, the 36-year-old Serbian champion, can pull that off — and he will be a heavy favorite to do so against Casper Ruud of Norway — it will be the tennis equivalent of Djokovic barging into Nadal’s house, raiding his refrigerator and plopping down on his living room couch to watch a “Godfather” marathon.“There is history on the line,” Djokovic said after his four-set win over Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, on Friday. “I like the feeling.”In Ruud — who dominated Alexander Zverev, 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 — Djokovic will face someone who has made three of the last five Grand Slam finals but who lost in his previous two finals. Ruud has yet to take a set from Djokovic across four head-to-head matches, which puts Djokovic in prime position to eclipse Nadal.Whether tennis fans outside Serbia like it or not, Djokovic has been managing this sort of feat for the better part of 15 years, and he shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. It started when he transformed elite tennis into a three-way battle for supremacy from its previous existence as a binary rivalry/love fest between Nadal and Roger Federer. With a win on Sunday, Djokovic would be the only player among that trio with at least three singles championships at each Grand Slam.Two years ago, he became the only man to beat Nadal twice at the French Open. The Federer faithful have long clung to the notion that their man will always be the ruler of the sport’s most hallowed ground: Centre Court at Wimbledon. Djokovic won his seventh Wimbledon singles championship last year and can draw even with Federer next month at the All England club.On Friday afternoon at Roland Garros, he was up to his old tricks once more against Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spaniard and top seed who was looking to move one step closer to completing his takeover of the sport. Djokovic and Alcaraz had shown themselves to be a level better than anyone else during the past year as they took turns winning Grand Slam titles and clamoring for the world’s top ranking.The match had figured to be one for the ages, a clash of generations and a potential torch passing — or really a torch-seizing — moment for the sport.Instead, Djokovic scored a victory for the old guard, registering a kind of technical knockout against a cramping Alcaraz. Djokovic prevailed in four sets, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, as Alcaraz crumbled in the face of the magnitude of the moment.It was a victory of wisdom and experience on a day when Alcaraz, in a moment of raw frankness, said he had been overcome by the idea of facing Djokovic on this giant stage. The cramps had nothing to do with fatigue or nutrition, he said. They were all about the stress of playing in just his second Grand Slam semifinal, against someone playing in his 45th.Carlos Alcaraz said he had been nervous playing against Djokovic in a late stage of the tournament. James Hill for The New York Times“Being in one of the greatest tournaments of the world, maybe for the first time in his career, he was expected to win,” Djokovic said. “He was maybe not an underdog chasing the title and trying to win.”Alcaraz started the match as nervous as he had ever been, he said, and the tension built from there into something he had never felt on a tennis court before.“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Alcaraz said of the cramps after the match. “The main thing, it was the tension.”Djokovic said he could easily relate to what Alcaraz had experienced. Early in his career, in the late rounds of the biggest tournaments, sometimes with championships on the line, his body failed him, for no other reason than the stress of what was unfolding around him.“It’s a part of the learning curve,” he said.Alcaraz said he had felt cramps before, but nothing like this. His right arm tightened in the first set, and by the third set the cramps had spread throughout his body. He knew exactly why.“If someone says that he gets into the court with no nerves playing against Novak, he lies,” Alcaraz said. “Playing a semifinal of a Grand Slam, you have a lot of nerves, but even more with facing Novak.” The next time he plays Djokovic might be different, he said, “but the nerves will be there.”For more than two hours, it had looked as though it might be the match for the ages. Djokovic played nearly perfectly in the first set, only for Alcaraz to showcase his power and his magical shotmaking in the next one.That included a mouthwatering winner on a full sprint toward the back of the court, during which he spun 180 degrees around the ball and then suddenly knifed a crosscourt forehand that skittered on the sideline tape. It sent the crowd into a frenzy and had Djokovic clapping his racket. After they had split sets, there was every reason to believe that the showdown would go five sets and last more than four hours, like so many classic matches Djokovic has played during his storied career.It didn’t. Not even close.Alcaraz began cramping up in the third set against Djokovic.James Hill for The New York TimesIn the third set, Djokovic quickly pushed Alcaraz into the most taxing tennis he had had to play in the tournament. Alcaraz, barely able to walk, headed for his chair after two games and asked for treatment from a trainer. The move cost him the next game, one in which he would have served, because the request did not occur during a scheduled changeover.That hardly mattered, though, because Alcaraz still had trouble moving when he returned to the court. He quickly lost the next four games and left the court for another break. He came back slightly stronger, but the lightning-quick movement that is one of the hallmarks of his game remained missing in action.The outcome became a mere matter of time, which was fitting, because in a sense, Djokovic had made it that way from the start of the afternoon.Sunday will be Djokovic’s 34th Grand Slam singles final. Not long ago, one might have guessed he would be facing Nadal on the other side of the net. But Nadal pulled out of this tournament with hip and leg injuries, leaving a grand stage for Djokovic.With Alcaraz out of the way, and with few expecting Ruud to be a tougher challenge, the pressure will fall squarely on Djokovic. That is exactly how he likes it.“I’m very happy to be in this position to write history of this sport, but I’m just thinking about winning the next match,” Djokovic said.Usually, he does. More

Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, who have played each other only once, will finally do so again on Friday in the French Open semifinals. Can the ultimate young talent beat the ultimate tennis mind?A moment arrives nearly every time a younger player seizes the advantage over Novak Djokovic, with designs of toppling him from his perch at the top of tennis.It doesn’t matter how deep a hole Djokovic has dug for himself, or how well the whippersnapper on the other side of the net might be playing.Maybe Djokovic is down by two sets, as he was against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the French Open final two years ago and against Jannik Sinner in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last year. Perhaps Djokovic is hobbling around the court with an injury after letting his opponent draw even, as he was after four sets against Taylor Fritz at the Australian Open in 2021, when he had torn an abdominal muscle and coughed up a two-set lead.Then the other guy begins to think he might actually be on the verge of something grand, just as Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish sensation, might do on Friday at the French Open in his semifinal showdown with Djokovic, a match the sport has been yearning for since the spring of 2022.The racket becomes a little heavier, the elbow a little tighter, as Djokovic’s foes start to imagine pulling off the win. After all these years, all these matches in the deep end of a Grand Slam tournament, Djokovic, 36, can spot it from a mile away.He doesn’t have to. Djokovic, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, is within 80 feet, and he believes in his heart that everything is about to go his way.It happened again on Tuesday after more than two hours of struggle against Karen Khachanov in the quarterfinals. Khachanov, the big, burly Russian with a hammer-like serve and forehand and nearly a decade less mileage on his legs, had taken the first set and forced a tiebreaker in the second. He had his opening.“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” said Karen Khachanov, who lost to Djokovic on Tuesday though he won the first set. “He always tries to find a way.”James Hill for The New York TimesOr not. A perfect, 7-0 tiebreaker drew Djokovic even. A break of serve in the first game of the next set put him ahead. Khachanov was finished.“The energy of the court shifted to my side,” Djokovic said after dispatching Khachanov.But when Djokovic faces Alcaraz, who has taken the No. 1 ranking from him twice in the past nine months, it will be a test against youth unlike anything Djokovic has faced before. The two have played only once, in May 2022, in Madrid; Djokovic and Alcaraz kept missing each other for one reason or another in the 13 months since.“A complete player,” Lorenzo Musetti, 21, of Italy, an Alcaraz victim this week in the fourth round, said of the player he came to know on Europe’s junior circuit.Singular moments when one generation takes over from another can feel like the shifting of tectonic plates. Every so often, men’s tennis delivers a torch-passing match: Pete Sampras tearing through John McEnroe at the 1990 U.S. Open; Roger Federer beating Sampras on Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2001. Is another one at hand?Daniil Medvedev, the world’s second-ranked player, and the only player currently in his 20s to beat Djokovic in a Grand Slam final, said not long ago that it is nearly impossible to beat Djokovic until you have first lost to him several times. Opponents need to get used to his shot patterns and his relentless ability to make them hit one more ball after they think they have ended the point.Not so for Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Djokovic in their lone meeting, in a deciding-set tiebreaker no less (albeit in a best-of-three-sets match). So far Alcaraz has exhibited none of the fragility displayed against Djokovic in big moments by his contemporaries, or even the players a few years older than he is who were supposed to be the next generation of tennis stars.“I really want to play that match,” Alcaraz said late Tuesday after he blasted through Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals to lock in the showdown with Djokovic. “I’m going to enjoy it.”Maybe.One of the age-old adages about sports in general and tennis in particular is that by the time athletes have gained the wisdom and experience necessary to truly crack their sport’s code, their bodies have betrayed them. Djokovic has been giving this idea a run for its money.That is not accidental. He almost never drinks alcohol. He tries to sleep eight and a half hours a night, with a focus on his prime R.E.M. sleep hours. His postmatch gym and stretching routine sometimes looks as hard as a normal person’s workout.It is also difficult to argue that there is a sounder, more developed brain in tennis. Djokovic long ago redrew the angles of the game, finding new shots to hit and new ways to win matches and titles, becoming the world’s top-ranked player in an era when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray were making that as hard as it had ever been. These days, he changes the pace and rhythm of points with ease, like a baseball pitcher mixing in fastballs, curveballs, sinkers and changeups in every at-bat. And then he uses a serve-and-volley like a player from the 1980s, just to make sure everyone knows he can do that, too.He has spent years trading notes on mental fortitude with superstar athletes in tennis and other sports — Boris Becker, Kobe Bryant, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to name a few. He meditates. He knows how to focus when he needs to like no one else. He has played five tiebreakers in this tournament without making an unforced error.Approaching his 45th Grand Slam semifinal, Djokovic has become a master of the five-set format, its almost inevitable emotional dips and swings. He seems to spend the first set gathering information about his opponent. If he loses that set, as he did in the last two Wimbledon finals, or even the next one, no big deal. There’s still plenty of time.“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” Khachanov said. “He always tries to find a way.”Whether that will work against Alcaraz is Friday’s great mystery. Alcaraz has so far shown so many of the benefits of youth — speed, strength, power, the optimism of a player who has scarcely any bad days — and so few of the pitfalls. He plays with a kind of limitless joy and freedom that other players struggle to comprehend, in the same way they struggle to handle the velocity of his forehand and his unmatched improvisational shotmaking.“He is able to make any shots on the court,” said Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach.James Hill for The New York TimesJuan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach, said he has always wanted to surge a step ahead. When he was playing Futures tournaments, in the sport’s third tier, he believed he was ready for Challengers, the second tier; when he was playing Challengers, he believed he was ready for the main tour.“He is able to make any shots on the court,” Ferrero said. “If you ask him to go to the net in a match point, he is able to do it. Or if I ask to return and go to the net, he is able to do it and make the drop shot.”He can play long points or short ones. Whatever the moment calls for.After Tuesday night, Tsitsipas had lost to both Djokovic and Alcaraz on the court where the two will face off Friday. Like everyone else, Tsitsipas said he had sized up the match as a showdown between the game’s most advanced brain, a player who seeks to maneuver his opponent and control every shot, and the game’s purest and fastest of talents.“One has experience, the other one has legs and moves like Speedy Gonzales,” Tsitsipas said. “One can hit huge, super big shots; and the other one prefers precision, to apply pressure and make his opponent move as much as possible.”Who will win?“I root for the kids,” Tsitsipas said.Against Djokovic, they need all the help they can get. More

If everything goes right in the quarterfinals Tuesday for Alcaraz and Djokovic, the two most dominant players on the men’s tour, the duel everyone has been waiting for will happen.Eight days ago, 128 men began competing in singles at the French Open. Pretty much everyone has been focused on two of them.Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic moved one step closer on Sunday to a potential semifinal showdown. They clinically disposed of overmatched opponents who often struggled to get points and games, much less sets, in back-to-back matches in front of a packed house on the Philippe Chatrier court, offering a look at what may be coming to that stadium before the week ends.First, Djokovic took apart Juan Pablo Varillas, a 27-year-old Peruvian who has spent the last decade beating the back bushes of the sport. He had never won a match in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament before this year’s French Open and enjoyed a storybook ride through the first week. Djokovic ended all that in 1 hour, 57 minutes, expending what energy he needed in the 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 win and not an ounce more.“I know what my goal is here,” he said, and he did not have to explain what it was.Then it was showtime, as Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, took the court against Lorenzo Musetti, an Italian who is just 10 months older and has almost as flashy a game.That one took 2:08 and had the identical score, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, for Alcaraz.“My best match of the tournament so far,” he said.For more than a year, Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, and Alcaraz, the new king of the sport who won his first major title at the U.S. Open last year, have somehow been missing each other.Sometimes one would lose before he got deep enough to face the other. Djokovic’s decision not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 forced him to miss the hard court tournaments in North America last summer and this spring. When Djokovic returned for the fall season and the Australian summer, Alcaraz was hurt. They could not connect.Now they are six sets away. Alcaraz has to beat the fifth seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, on Tuesday. They have played four matches and Alcaraz has won them all.Djokovic plays 11th-seeded Karen Khachanov of Russia. They have played nine times, with Djokovic winning eight.That Alcaraz and Djokovic will face each other in a semifinal on Friday is not a certainty. Even the best players have bad days. Both Tsitsipas and Khachanov like playing on clay more than on any other surface. Djokovic has battled a sore elbow recently. Alcaraz has shown in the past eight months that he can be prone to injury. Upsets happen.“Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game,” Novak Djokovic said.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersThat said, on Sunday Djokovic and Alcaraz delivered performances — and self-assessments about them — that lent an air of near inevitability to a coming showdown.Djokovic has long been the master of match management at Grand Slam tournaments, which require men to win seven best-of-five-set matches to claim the title and almost always separate the great from the very good. He starts playing at the level of energy expenditure, both physical and emotional, that he has decided he needs for the match, and dials it up only if the need arises.So many of his winners Sunday, hit on angles that he saw and Varillas did not, may not have had the zip he displays against other opponents. They did not have to.He was up by 4-0 before the match was roughly 20 minutes old against an opponent who had never before faced anyone at his level.“With one ball you are being aggressive, and then with one ball he turns the coin the other way and then you are defending,” Varillas said.Djokovic has been in this position before, one match away from the heavyweight duel with one of the biggest names in the sport, often Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Last year it was a quarterfinal match against Nadal, who also has 22 Grand Slam singles titles. The year before Nadal loomed in the semifinals. Those both came to fruition.Djokovic did not pretend he has not been paying attention to what will come after what comes next.“You always follow the top guys in your half, how they’re playing,” he said. “Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game.”Yes, he is focused on himself, he said, “but of course I do keep in mind what the others are doing.”The “others,” of course, means Alcaraz, who, perhaps because of his youth, comes to his matches from a vantage point other than energy conservation, looking instead to create the greatest spectacle possible.He relished the prospect of Sunday’s match with Musetti, his smile breaking out and his eyes lighting up as he spoke of playing another flashy upstart.“Really good rallies, good shots between us, and of course it’s going to be a really fun match to watch, as well,” he said.At times, that can be as important to him as winning. He almost never sees a drop shot he does not want to race to, a lob he does not think he can chase down so he can extend the rally with a shot between the legs, even if it means giving his opponent an easy overhead, which he will also try to chase. He is the one making the magic but also its biggest fan.After his win on Sunday, he confessed that sometimes, after his best shots, he wants to look up at the big screen in the stadium and drool over the replay along with everyone else in the crowd and watching on television at home.“A lot of times,” he said.Six more sets. Then, he and Djokovic will get to put on the show Roland Garros has been waiting for. More