Like Coco Gauff, Novak Djokovic escapes US Open third round with victory from the brink

NEW YORK—What a difference one game can make. Just ask Coco Gauff and Novak Djokovic. Both of them looked like they were on track to lose against inspired opponents on Friday night. Both broke serve midway through. And both turned the match 180 degrees in their direction after that, and had no trouble the rest of the way.

For Gauff, the game came at 3-3 in the second set in her third-round match with Elise Mertens. Until that point, Mertens had been the aggressor, and the calmer and more efficient player. She had shown no sign of night-session nerves as she leaned into the court and pushed Gauff back. Gauff had responded by going for too much, and overhitting several putaway shots by inches.

As Mary Carillo said in the commentary booth, the blond, quietly determined Mertens was “just sort of pleasantly menacing.”

She menaced Gauff through the first set, and through the first five games of the second, right up to the point when she hit a forehand winner to go up 30-15 at 3-3. That’s when Gauff’s coach, Brad Gilbert, told her, “You gotta match her intensity.” Maybe more important, that’s also when Mertens double faulted.

It was one of the few missteps she had made in an otherwise immaculate performance, but it wouldn’t be the last. Two points later, she sent a backhand long. At break point, she hit a forehand wide. Mertens was finally human, and Gauff was finally fired up. When she saved a break point with a net-cord winner at 4-3, she was home free, and wouldn’t lose another game in a 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 win.

“She’s the type of player where she steps in, if you give her something short, especially on the backhand side,” Gauff said of Mertens. “She was doing well attacking on that end.”

“I think after the 2-3 game, I moved straight through. I think I established my game plan…I tried to keep her playing back and off her back foot, also coming in a little bit more so she knew I wasn't going to stay back every time she was playing defense.”

Gauff’s crucial game came right in the middle of her match, and so did Djokovic’s. Like Coco, he was facing a seemingly nerveless underdog opponent, Laslo Djere, who was playing well above his normal level. Djere basically out-Djokoviched Djokovic for the first two sets, rifling low-lining forehands and two-handed backhands from corner to corner and hardly missing.

“He was hitting his spots so well,” Djokovic said of his countryman, noting that the ball was bouncing lower than normal in the night conditions. “Everything was in his strike zone, it was very difficult for me to find a solution.”

After giving himself “a little pep talk in the mirror” during his customary bathroom break when he was two sets down, Djokovic finally found the solution in the second game of the third. He dug a little deeper, began to hit the ball with a little more urgency, and, most noticeably, he began to grunt after each shot. The rallies lengthened, and you could feel Djokovic working harder than he had been on defense. Djere seemed to feel it too, because he started to press for the first time. Up 40-30, he missed an easy forehand into the net. Down break point, after an arduous rally, he put another forehand into the net.

The crowd erupted, Djokovic lifted his arms over his head…and Djere, after looking like he might pull of the upset of the year, was suddenly and indisputably toast. Djokovic would win 16 more games, and Djere just five.

“In the third, I kind of lifted myself up,” Djokovic said. “The crowd got into it. Once I got the break in the third, I thought, ‘OK, I have a chance.’ I played a bit more aggressive.”

If Djokovic and Gauff go on to win the titles at this year’s US Open, we might forget about Friday night’s third-rounders. We’ll forget that each of them looked destined to lose, until they won one crucial game, and set the world right again.