Raphael, we have a problem.
Toni Nadal, in 2005 (published in “Come on, Rafa!”, by Alejandro Ciriza)
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21 minutes have passed and Novak Djokovic (36) has not yet appeared at Philippe Chatrier.
He has lost his serve and is down 3-0.
Not a surprise: This is one slow-burn tennis player.
-If Nadal is power and Federer is patience, Djokovic is a strategist -John McEnroe had said on occasion.
(The same McEnroe who a couple of hours earlier, on the Suzanne Lenglen track, had teamed up with Mats Wilander to knock out the Noah-Bahrami couple in a double of legends).
The final is rarefied and Djokovic thinks and rethinks.
He does it while dribbling the ball, the wait is exasperating for the rival. He bounces the ball twenty times, sometimes with the racket, sometimes with his hand, sometimes there are more than twenty bounces. He also returns the balls to the ball boys, analyzes the weights, the pressures and the proportions, even the temperatures.
Behind his back, ball boys come and go desperately.
Time drags on, the public is restless, Serbian voices emerge from the stands. They are hoarse, impossible to know what they say.
When some fan yells, Djokovic stops the pot count and starts over. This time, he has the feeling that he is playing at home: Serbian flags abound.
-No-le, no-le! -the parish shouts, today there are no boos or rudeness for Djokovic, the man who wants to feel loved in Paris, like Nadal or Federer, but contradicts himself.
-I don’t care if they boo me; I keep winning -he had said days ago.
-He has no weak points: Djokovic is as capable of attacking as he is of defending. When he is well, he is a machine to play tennis – Toni Nadal often repeats.
As if he were listening to Rafael’s uncle, Djokovic corrected things and stabilized the match, and at 3:13 a.m. he projected himself to his third crown at Roland Garros, his 23rd great title, the tiebreaker with the manacorÃ: 7-6 (1), 6-3 and 7-5.
(She’s already up there with Serena Williams; ahead, at 24, she’s second only to Margaret Court.)
(…)
The game ends at 40 minutes, when Casper Ruud (24) begins to feel the weight of Djokovic, the weight of 22 greats and a crazy career, the one lived by Rafael Nadal and the Serbian talent. Tom Brady is in Djokovic’s box, one row behind Goran Ivanisevic!
(Mike Tyson walks nearby; Ibrahimovic and Mbappé sit together in the VIP box).
Djokovic returns to the Norwegian the service break and insists on sending balls to his backhand. Ruud is a magnificent earthling: when he hits a forehand, the ball rises and the bounce draws parabolas that annoy the opponent.
This is how Nadal plays.
Although Ruud, the Norwegian who has already played (and lost) in three Grand Slam finals, is not Nadal.
And for this reason, as soon as both opponents approach the tie break of the first set, Ruud dismounts: Djokovic points it out in a flash, 7-1.
(The Serb has won all six tie breaks he’s played in this tournament, why would it be any different now?).
Now, wide is Castilla.
Ruud’s tennis goes into crisis and Djokovic rides on Paris. The Norwegian’s collapse is phenomenal, he has been unmasked, now his forehands are defenseless pecks that invigorate Djokovic. To each of them, the Serb responds with more virulence.
Djokovic is the owner of tennis, he is the owner of himself. When he subtracts, he stretches like gum, like a cat, and he always intuits the Norwegian’s next shot, it almost never remains false.
Ruud sees himself entangled in the Serb’s web, he sees himself where before, in the previous rounds, Kachánov, Varillas, Davidovich or Fucsovics had been seen, even Alcaraz in the first set of his fateful semifinal, before stabilizing the score in the second and end up blocking because of the cramps.
In the press box, comrade Luis Miguel Pascual, correspondent for the Efe news agency in Paris, reverts to San Mateo:
-It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to see Ruud take this title.
At 2:13, Djokovic launches a parallel forehand and already has the second set in his bag.
In the absence of great emotions, Philippe Chatrier rides the wave. The press box is empty. The journalists go to the room, in the guts of Philippe Chatrier: cool and in the light of the lamp one writes more comfortably.
Bets have sunk for Ruud, who gobbles down a banana while the gardeners soak the clay. This is once again the Ruud of 2022, that downcast Norwegian who was going to surrender in three sets to the imperial Rafael Nadal, the colossus whose steel statue receives those who visit Roland Garros.
Nothing unsettles Djokovic anymore, not even the chair umpire: if the referee gives him a warning for falling asleep before serving, the Serb responds with a direct serve and raises his racket, cheering on the crowd, who are on his side today.
His presence rises above the rest of the contemporary circuit. He already has 23 big ones, one more than Nadal, three more than Federer, and no one coughs on him.
