For Novak Djokovic, 2024 is all a victory lap

Novak Djokovic was feeling anxious as he prepared to board the long flight to Australia with his team late in December 2022. He was unsure of how he would be received at the other end, or even if he would be allowed into Australia, having been detained and then deported the previous January due to his refusal to receive a vaccination for COVID-19.

“Well, I kind of was joking around with my team, hoping that I can enter Australia this time,” Djokovic said roughly 12 months ago, shortly after he arrived in Oz without incident—still unvaccinated but wary of the reception he might receive and bitterly complaining about having been cast as “the villain of the world.”

The Serbian star needn’t have worried.

The Aussies had power-washed their collective hard drive and largely embraced Djokovic anew as he ripped through the draw in Adelaide, then powered his way to his 22nd Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne—a critical win that left him tied with Rafael Nadal in the GOAT sweepstakes. Buoyed by this impressive rebound, Djokovic went on to win two more Grand Slams in 2023. If he wins again in a few weeks' time, Djokovic will hurdle Margaret Court (also with 24 major singles titles) to become the most prolific Grand Slam singles champion of all time.

As the new year dawns, Djokovic is beautifully positioned to make good on his intent to just keep winning Grand Slam titles. His fitness appears undiminished (though he was snake-bitten by a wrist problem in his United Cup-ending loss to Alex de Minaur), his durability noteworthy, his determination uncorrupted by triumph.

“I have so much respect for him,” Grigor Dimitrov said, after Djokovic bested him last fall in Paris to secure his record 40th ATP Masters 1000 title. “The way he's competing on the court is on a completely different level.”

So, what is left for Djokovic to accomplish? Given that in subtle ways he still seems to keep getting better and better, what could possibly go awry to bring us one step closer to the end of the "Big 3" era?

Accomplishment-wise, the most disappointing—and probably least forgettable—moment in Djokovic’s year had to be his critical loss in the Davis Cup semifinals to Jannik Sinner despite having held three match points. It’s a fail Djokovic surely will want to avenge. Serbia has not claimed the coveted trophy Cup since Djokovic led the squad to a win in 2010.

“This is a tough one to swallow,” Djokovic admitted in a painfully frank assessment after Italy secured the win and went on the claim the Davis Cup. “I was really trying to hype myself and encourage myself for this week. Throughout the entire season, you know, my thoughts were on this week with my Davis Cup team.”

But Djokovic’s Davis Cup disappointment of 2023 is still small beer compared to the career-long frustration he has experienced in Olympic competition. The only medal Djokovic has claimed is a bronze in singles, secured in 2008. He has taken losses in the medal round to Pablo Carreno Busta, Alexander Zverev and Juan Martin del Potro.

As numerous current and former stars can attest, the Olympics can be hell on elite players. The tournament is hastily played in a compressed time period, wedged into a crowded tennis calendar. It is overshadowed by more traditional Olympic events, and saddled with awkward qualification and format protocols—all of which create pressure and uncertainty. Perhaps worst of all, from a strategic vantage for Djokovic, is that the matches are best-of-three sets. The 2024 Summer Games in Paris will probably represent Djokovic’s last chance to earn singles gold.

On tour, Djokovic’s path looks more like an obstacle course than the smooth straightaway that some may expect. It’s a blessing for him that he has nothing to either lose or prove. The rest of his career is a victory lap, even if it may not appear that way in light of his continuing Spartan training regimen, the obvious fire in his belly, or that most underestimated of his gifts: the joy he takes from competing.

Djokovic now needs every advantage he can muster because, in addition to the inevitability of aging, he’s straddling a generational seam. The original “Next Gen” cohort (players like Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev, Denis Shapovalov, Karen Khachanov, et al) have refreshed the Top 10 but came nowhere near producing a player of historic importance (yet).

“The young guys didn’t really whup up on the Big 3 to get them out of the way, which is the normal way the game has always evolved,” Tennis Channel analyst Jimmy Arias told me recently. “It’s like these guys [the Big 3] are just fading away, they’re not getting beaten.”

Meanwhile, a new vanguard of gifted young players has been putting major pressure on the pecking order. Those fresh challengers include Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Holger Rune, Casper Ruud and Ben Shelton. That has to be a source of motivation as well as anxiety for Medvedev, Zverev and company, who are almost all still just in their mid-20s. Djokovic—or anyone else—writes that group off at his peril. The talent on the tour is piling up into a logjam.

As the new year dawns, Djokovic is beautifully positioned to make good on his intent to just keep winning Grand Slam titles.

Djokovic’s current status almost strains credulity, given that his drive to surpass his rivals in the Great GOAT Race looked nearly doomed when he was unceremoniously ejected from the 2020 US Open during his fourth-round match. (He accidentally hit a line umpire in the throat with a ball fired in a hissy fit.) At the time, Djokovic had 17 major titles, three tough wins behind Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer (who both skipped the American major due that year to the pandemic). Time appeared to be running out.

“Can you imagine how important this default will be if Novak comes up short in the hunt for most titles?” ESPN analyst Luke Jensen remarked at the time.

But that default proved to be a pivotal moment for Djokovic. Since then, he is 65-3 in Grand Slam competition, with seven titles. He has failed to make the final in just one major he entered over the past three years. In 2023, at the age of 36, he went 56-7 (27-1 in Grand Slam competition), winning three majors. If it was not quite Djokovic’s best year (the honor goes to 2021, by a hair), but it may have been his greatest. In 2023, he also triumphed in an equally tricky if less Homeric enterprise. He appeared finally to win his career-long quest for widespread admiration and acceptance.

I would argue that, if anything, it is now trendy to like Djokovic. Jon Wertheim

Djokovic’s charm offensive has included a willingness to tolerate fans who sometimes boo him for no apparent reason, and even-handedness whether winning or losing. Instead of spiking the football after eliminating crowd darling Alcaraz in the semifinals of the most recent Roland Garros, he said of his rival (who admitted to being so overwhelmed by the occasion that he was conspicuously hampered by leg cramps): “It's a part of the learning curve. It's part of the experience. He's only 20, you know. So he's got plenty of time. He's shown so much maturity in the last couple of years.”

After Alcaraz repaid Djokovic by stripping him of the Wimbledon title in their next Grand Slam meeting, Djokovic said: “I've won some epic finals that I was very close to losing. Maybe this is kind of a fair-and-square deal for me to lose a match like this here.”

Many also retain the image of Djokovic, sobbing in his chair during a changeover late in the 2021 US Open final, his dreams of a calendar-year Grand Slam evaporating faster than his tears. But those tears did not mourn lost opportunity, he later said, but celebrated the “love” and “support” he felt from the undependable Gotham crowd. It just isn’t the kind of thing a player is likely to make up.

Also, Djokovic’s charitable efforts on behalf of his less-gifted peers as a founder of the Professional Tennis Players' Association grow more impressive with each passing day, with the PTPA gaining traction on what has become a rapidly-shifting tennis landscape.

Djokovic’s campaign to win hearts and minds hasn’t been without misfires. Bitter resentment of his actions during the pandemic, due to his anti-vax attitude and actions, left simmering resentment. So did his promotion of the ill-conceived Adria Tour, which loomed as a potential super-spreader event before it was shut down. In 2023, Djokovic’s father Srdjan was caught on camera yucking it up with a couple of Vladimir Putin stooges, but many found Djokovic’s reaction to the ensuing controversy insensitive, as well as inadequate. At Roland Garros, Djokovic generated further controversy with nationalistic comments about Kosovo, drawing a rebuke from, among others, the sports minister of France.

If Djokovic is an acquired taste, more and more people are gaining it. My colleague Jon Wertheim probably put it best when he wrote, in October: “Some fans are ride-or-die, and are unconditional in their support. Some fans are stubborn haters, unwilling to come off their negative position. ... But I would contend that most fans—and media—are not fixed in their view. I would argue that, if anything, it is now trendy to like Djokovic.”

Citing various facets of Djokovic’s persona as well as his accomplishments, Wertheim compared his history to that of Serena Williams, adding: “The grievances recede with time, and the player overwrites and overrides this with excellence.”

No longer a mere mission, that excellence has become Djokovic’s defining quality.