A spark in the dark unleashed Novak Djokovic after months of frustration

Well, there is always that kind of conviction and belief inside of me, that I can win a Slam. That’s the reason why I’m still competing at this level. That’s why I’m here. Novak Djokovic, 24-time Grand Slam champion, 37 years old and without a title since last November, before playing his third-round match at Roland Garros with Lorenzo Musetti.

That assertion by Djokovic sounded like the boast of a proud and wounded man when he made it to the roomful of reporters at Roland Garros. Many of them are on what you might call a death watch for a titan’s ambitions. Many thought he was, well, flexing.

How wrong they were.

At the conclusion of his subsequent , Djokovic stood in the chilly, damp air on Court Phillipe Chatrier at 3:07 a.m., no longer looking nearly as peaked and fatigued as he sometimes appeared over the previous four-plus hours.

Djokovic thanked the troupers. Many of them had huddled deep in their mufflers, like turtles with their heads drawn in, enduring the night. They helped take Djokovic over the finish like a thousands-strong cadre of “domestiques” in a cycling race.

“You gave me energy at 2-2 the fourth set,” Djokovic told them, more forcefully than such acknowledgments are usually made. As if to emphasize his sincerity, he continued, “At that moment, I became a different player. . .I became a different player. That was perhaps the best match I ever played here. The most exciting.”

As turning points go, it was as good an explanation as any of this comeback for the ages. In truth, epics like this one are so engorged with “key moments” and “critical unforced errors” and “crucial break points” that they all run together. This is what many of us will be left with as the enduring memory of this 4-hour and 32-minute epic: Djokovic flying through the air, legs akimbo, lashing out with that cobra-quick forehand; Lorenzo Musetti, caked in damp red clay, turning his back to the net as he coiled, cobra-like, to whale on a backhand—a one-handed backhand, no less.

Over-and-over and over-and-over they did this, defying most of what we take as the limits of will as well as skill.

Beware, floppy-haired contender Jannik Sinner. Watch out, human smiley-face, Carlos Alcaraz. Don’t even think about it, Sascha, Daniil, Stefanos. Djokovic has planted his flag in the red dirt with the emphatic thrust of a man vindicated. He will be very hard to bury in headlines declaring his demise now.

Or will he?

As much as this statement will do for Djokovic’s confidence—and trepidations of his future opponent(s)—it cannot do very much for his legs no matter how deep the massage, cold the ice bath, or well-researched the recovery effort. The sobering fact for Djokovic (call it the hangover) is that his body clock has likely gone haywire from the mad schedule. Impacted by the soggy weather in Paris all of last week, and the ensuing scheduling and court changes, the match didn’t even start until after 10:30 p.m.—later than many featured night matches at Roland Garros have ended. But Djokovic wasn’t going to let carping about lost sleep ruin one of his finest moments.

“I don’t want to get into it [the schedule],” Djokovic told reporters as dawn crept closer and closer to the press center. “I have my opinions, but I think there are great things to talk about in this match today. Both Lorenzo and my performances stand out, so I don’t want to be talking about the schedule.”

Instead, Djokovic, who also set a new mark with his 36th five-set Grand Slam win, reiterated how the pivot-point occurred in that fifth game of the fourth set:

“I was in real trouble. . . At one point, I didn’t know what to do. From both ends, he was getting a lot of balls back, winners from both corners, good servers, running every ball down the court. It didn’t feel great playing him in that third set and the beginning of the fourth.”

Then the crowd that had so often spurned Djokovic, the crowd that he had courted for so long, seeking their affection, stepped up to encourage—and incite—Djokovic.

“I needed that energy at two-all in the fourth,” explained Djokovic. “They started chanting my name, and I just felt a great new wave of willpower and energy. I think I was a different player from that moment onwards. I think from that moment onwards I only lost one game.”

Soaring by the end of the fourth set, Djokovic entered the storied zone where the ball looks large as a volleyball and the body flies into automatic pilot.

“The fifth set was just amazing. I was on a high, riding that wave and really not letting go of that stranglehold that I created on Lorenzo at the end of the fourth. I just kept going, kept on plugging away, and [hit] an amazing winner to finish the match.”

Is it an omen that the match shattered the previous record for latest match conclusion at Roland Garros (1:26 a.m.) by an hour-and-a-half—a mark established, in yoke with Sinner, in 2020 by Rafael Nadal?

Nadal went on to win the tournament. It’s a handy omen, but Djokovic has been unleashed after months of frustration. He doesn’t need to be superstitious.

Beware, one and all.