PARIS—It’s never struck me as a particularly good sign when a player who is losing a match takes his baseball cap off, turns it around, and puts its on backward. It sends a sort of white flag message—with one quick move, you’ve gone from all business to getting on the plane for Cancun.
It’s much worse when a player makes this move at the very start of the second set in a three-out-of-five-setter. But that’s what Thiemo de Bakker did on Court Chatrier this afternoon. And it’s tough to blame him. His opponent, Novak Djokovic, is having that affect on a lot of guys these days. Still, as intimidating as the Serb has been in going undefeated in 2011, this felt like something new. De Bakker, who Tweeted about his “tough draw” when he found out who he’d be facing, looked like he had no hope from the start. He appeared to be pressing from the first point. In his first service game, he buried two easy forehands in the net and stalked back to the baseline with his head down, as if he had met his rightful fate for the day. By the beginning of the second, the hat was pointed backward and he was trying to end points with desperation drop shots. They weren't working.
“He’s a great player and he showed it,” de Bakker said afterward, beginning a litany of homage toward his junior friend.
“I didn’t have any chance at all.”
“I mean, he great.”
“He makes every shot.”
“Now he’s just way too good.”
And this was all in an interview that lasted approximately a minute and a half.
This is a shining example of what you might call the Champion’s Dividend. Basically, you win free points, very often at crucial moments, just for being who you are—wouldn’t that be nice? If 90 percent of life is showing up, right now that percentage is much higher if you can show up as Novak Djokovic. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have benefitted from the dividend for years. For them, it comes from winning majors; for Djokovic, at this tournament at least, it will come from doing something borderline miraculous: Straight-setting Nadal twice in a row on clay. Today he didn’t even have to wait for a crucial moment to enjoy the dividend. It was in effect from the second game on.
This is the first time I’ve seen Djokovic live since Indian Wells, since he elevated himself from great to historic. His game looked cleaner all around; it reminded me a lot of what he looked like at his best in the glutenous days of 2008. Very meticulous and methodical, with easy power on his most improved shot, his forehand, and safety built into even his most aggressive strokes. He doesn’t appear to be going for anything risky or near the lines, yet his shots are penetrating and tough to track down because he can change direction with them so effortlessly. Every player, even the very best, has his or her pet patterns. Right now Djokovic’s are hard to read. He has his choice of corners with both strokes, from just about any position. Once he got a hold of a mid-court forehand, de Bakker was flailing.
Most impressive was a shot I’d never seen from Djokovic before, but which could prove very valuable at the French. Early in the second, with things well under control, he took one of those mid-court forehands, and rather than firing it flat into a corner, he lifted it with a lot more topspin than normal. The ball briefly looked like it would sail long, and de Bakker slowed down his pursuit. Instead, it dropped like a stone, Nadal-like, well inside the baseline for a winner.
“It was a great first match for me in Roland Garros,” a cleaned-up and satisfied-looking Djokovic said afterward. Just as I’m always struck by how much bigger the players look in person, I’m always struck by how much smaller and more normal they appear to be when they sit down behind the interview table. The same was true of Djokovic today. It was hard to believe that this lean, wiry character with the neat hair and the nice red shirt was the current terror of tennis.
“I was being very cautious,” he said about his game, “because I knew that de Bakker has quality. I was serving really, really well and being very aggressive, using every opportunity to step into the court.”
As for the conditions, and the lighter Babolat balls that have been introduced this year, he said, “I was happy with the court. The balls are obviously different than any other tournament I’ve played on clay courts, but just pretty satisfied with the way I was getting used to the conditions.”
Nothing is fazing Djokovic these days, except, perhaps, the continued questions about his diet. “All I’m going to say is that it’s gluten-free,” he said, showing his one flash of irritation. “I can’t talk about it, because it’s private.” Why it’s private we don’t know.
Is Djokovic playing it too close to the vest now? On the one hand, yes, his lack of answers may only invite more irritating questions. On the other hand, what he said later is also true: A lot of other things aside from his diet—including his serve, forehand, and distractions from his support team—have been, at least for the time being, solved. He seems to feel, simply, that he’s finally playing the type of tennis that he, and we, knew he could play all along.
“I’m gonna say it again,” Djokovic said when the diet was mentioned later. “This is only part of the changes that I had, you know. It’s not a major thing that affected my success on the court, you know.”
Reasons and changes and diets aside, what’s making Djokovic so difficult to beat right now is his consistency. Any opponent who wants to walk out there with a hope of an upset is going to have to improve his shot tolerance—he’s going to have to make many more balls than normal in a row, on many more points. I said before the tournament that the pressure on Djokovic would be immense, and his winning this event would be a sign that he’s ready to become “an all-timer.” When Nadal came to this tournament as a teenager on a massive clay-court roll, a lot of us thought he would need to learn to lose a big final in Paris—he had never even played here—before he won one. We were wrong, and it was an early sign that Nadal was something special, someone not just of the moment. Can Djokovic, man of this moment, prove that same thing?
It will be exceedingly hard to stop him. Djokovic is so solid at the moment that an upset or even a tight match seems improbable (that could obviously change, especially if he faces a figure as imposing as del Potro in the third round). Right now Djokovic can play "very cautiously" and still win. Knowing that takes a lot of the pressure off.
Late in the first set, De Bakker won his first long baseline exchange. It was hardly a crucial point, but he let out a big “come on!” when Djokovic’s last ball went long. De Bakker didn’t believe he could build on that small triumph, or that it would be a turing point; he was long past hope by then. But he had to celebrate the moment anyway, because it had taken so much to earn it. Then he put his head down again. He knew he would have to repeat it on the next point. Just another dividend of being a champ.