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by Pete Bodo
Many of you may recall my No Djoke post of March, 2007, which represents my first close look at Novak Djokovic, and ended with the question, is he The Perfect Player?. It was, of course, a rhetorical question intended to create discussion (which it did). But I must say I was genuinely blown-away by young Novak's game. As many of you know, the game I most admire is a game in which significant power is delivered in as smooth and streamlined a way as possible. Clean is good. Simple is good. The less moving parts a guy (or girl) has, the better I like it. A backhand doesn't need interesting bits, A forehand doesn't benefit from exaggeration, or flourishes. It's a tennis stroke, not a violin concerto.
But somehow, that elegance (for not everything simple is elegant, but something elegant is almost always simple) vanished from Djokovic's game at around the time he won the Australian Open in 2008, or maybe it never was quite the way I experienced and described it back in the desert in '07. And over the past few months, I've watched the guy and repeatedly asked myself: Can he really be moving and playing so differently - is it even possible? Suddenly, that wonderful marriage of efficiency and execution that adds up to an irresistible aura of purposefulness - that sense Djokovic always made the right decision, and executed it with a lethal lack of fuss or complication - was gone.
Suddenly, it seemed, the moving parts were becoming far more obvious. Where once he looked resilient, he now looked hinged. There was a flying elbow here, a too-prodigious backswing there, and kind of loose-jointedness I'd not seen before in Djokovic's disciplined, economical game. He seemed more willing to engage in aimless rallying, taking a big cut at the ball because he could, or because the other guy did, and Novak decided to go him one better..That glorious instinct for advancing the plot seemed to have dimmed. When I watched his torso at work, I was less struck by the easy, exquisitely timed rotation than those arms and that racket windmilling around. He'd been a jet, now he was a helicopter. I exaggerate to make my point.
I honestly confess I have no idea to what degree these perceptions were reality-based; on the other hand, they grew out of watching a real guy playing real matches, not my imagination. Yesterday's final in Miami, in which Andy Murray crushed Djokovic, left me feeling that I wasn't entirely off the mark. Because there were times in the match, mainly in the early parts of the second set, when the old Perfect Player seemed to emerge from hiding. That **Djokovic, having found his long lost friend, didn't cling to his coattails and make more of a match of it was disturbing. And that was my big take-away from the final. Somewhere along the way Djokovic had wandered off message, and perhaps so far that he no longer knows what that message is. And now he's paying the price.
The switch to a new racket certainly accelerated that process, if indeed that's what's going on. Feeling the pressure of having to "protect" something (a title, a ranking, a reputation) probably factored into it, too. The psychology of defending is different from that of attacking, and it carries an enormous temptation to sit back and wait, to focus too much on repelling and not enough on pre-empting. Remember, it was Pete Sampras who said that the toughest job in tennis is defending a major title. You need to behave like the man to beat, but resting on your laurels and just challenging rivals to take their best shot is too passive an approach. The sheer number of hours Djokovic has logged on the court may come into it as well. It's probably easy to lose your sense of purpose when you know that just going through the motions is good enough to get you quarters and semis most anywhere.
I didn't get a chance to attend the press conferences: I listened to them beneath headphones in the press room as I wrote my analysis for Tennis.com. But I was certain someone would have asked the question I had, and what to me was - by far - the most pertinent question of the day: Is this guy (Murray) in your head?. Well nobody did. To me, though, the evidence was pretty compelling - Murray is 3-0 vs. Djokovic in their most recent meetings. And, as my report for Tennis.com suggested, that ragged and sloppy start, combined with the way Djokovic rolled over after briefly finding his game in set 2, to be broken in an atrociously played and hugely significant game at 5-5, was nothing short of startling. This is a Grand Slam champ we're talking about - something even red-hot Andy Murray can't claim.
But having slept on it, I think there's an even larger and more pertinent question to ask: Has Djokovic lost his way? Has he drifted away from his best game, like an improperly moored boat slowly moving out with the tide until suddenly the land is no longer visible? It can happen. All kinds of things can happen - just look at Guillermo Coria. The ability to stay on top of your game, and do the things and make the decisions that keep you there, is a specific talent. It's possible to have a great game without knowing it, and to ride it to glory. It's also possible to get bucked off, if you get a little lazy or sloppy. Still without knowing it, despite the painful experience.
If I were Djokovic, I would watch this final over and over, no matter how painful it may be, because it seemed so graphically to illustrate why he's had trouble getting traction this year. The shift from defensive to offensive tennis, the failure to finish the job those suddenly successful attacks started, the attempts to go for too much, alternating with bouts of indecision and uncertainty - they were all telling. Plus, you know Murray - he's the tennis shrink who lays a guy down on the asphalt couch and asks him all the tough and uncomfortable questions about his game. He ought to charge his opponents by the hour. Too bad most guys probably don't have the stomach (or is it humility?) to ask if he'd burn them a DVD to take home with them, so they could study it.
But that's just what Djokovic should do. It's unusual for a Grand Slam champion to find himself in these straits so soon after vaulting onto the big stage. But remember, this guy has an awful lot going on, starting with his role and obligations as a Serbian icon - a personage in a culture with a very powerful and deep hunger for recognition, and enormous, volatile passions. He's got a complicated life, which is all the more reason for him to re-discover the uncomplicated game that was once elegant as well as efficient.