I remember Novak Djokovic 18 years ago, limping on a tennis court, in a minor round, for example at Roland Garros, blocking himself in the Suzanne Lenglen due to cramped muscles, finally compromising against Guillermo Coria.
That initiatory Djokovic was disconcerting. His talent and his physicality didn't fit. The miscellany of blows, a melting pot of resources crowned by the vertigo of the rest of him, did not lead him to anything, because the adolescent melted as the minutes passed. If the match was extended, caput.
Djokovic was celiac, although no one knew it. He was about to find out.
It took him a couple of years before he found the problem and the solution, and that delay conditioned his career, his role in the world of tennis: it made him late to the party. When Djokovic finally emerged, the world had already been divided. We were Nadalists or Federeristas.
Djokovic was the third man.
The third man never accepted his role. On the contrary: nonconformist, he was determined to break everything. This is not a complacent guy, rather he is a gladiator. He didn't want to be a guest, sit on a couch, pay for a drink and listen to the DJ's playlist. He wanted to design the guest list, dance in the center of the floor, illuminated by the spotlights, serve the drinks and drink them, choose the soundtrack and turn off the light when leaving.
So much prominence generated found effects.
It earned him currents of antipathy in popular ideology, an effect aggravated by his excessive interventions. He threw a ball at a line judge and was expelled from the US Open. He broke more than one racket and more than two and more than three. He bypassed anti-Covid protocols by organizing a tournament in Serbia. He challenged the world by trying to play the Australian Open without having been vaccinated.
The desire for prominence also made him better. Himself and his rivals: by unanimous decision, he has always been considered a fearsome tennis player, a kind of tennis mamba, his worst adversary.
Toni Nadal, the manacorí's uncle and former coach, confessed it to me. He told me:
-On the eve of a match against Djokovic, we never really knew what tactics to use. If Djokovic is fit, he has no weak points.
Carlos Alcaraz Sr., the father of Murcian talent, thinks something similar:
-My son thinks that Djokovic does impossible things.
Djokovic's determination to be the king of the party raised the popularity of tennis to levels unimaginable in the past and, possibly, unrepeatable in the future. Three tennis players, the members of the Big Three, ended up embarking on a crazy race, like that of 'those crazy people in their crazy gadgets': the Grand Slams record. Time seemed to stop in the three-way tie at 20, but Federer stayed there, badly injured in the back and knees; and two steps further up, Nadal stopped, weighed down by his foot problems, a degenerative injury that ended up disrupting his entire body, who knows in what conditions he will return.
And only at the top, now at the same height as Margaret Court and her 24 greats, is Djokovic, the celiac tennis player who limped in adolescence, fought with the world in his second youth and has achieved plenitude and unanimous applause in the maturity.
