Novak Djokovic kisses the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup after winning the men's singles final at the 2023 Australian Open on Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
If proof was required that time-plus-success is the only 100-per-cent-effective PR strategy, Novak Djokovic provided it on Sunday.
A year ago, the Serbian tennis champ was the most hated man in Australia, and a figure of fun everywhere else. For about a week there, as he was fed in chunks through the Australian courts, Djokovic was the noxious heart of global social-media discourse. You were only permitted one opinion on him – science-hating nitwit – and encouraged to share it. How we all laughed.
Who’s laughing now?
On Sunday, Djokovic won another Australian Open. Unable to resist his brilliance, many of the same people who jeered him last year gave him a lengthy standing ovation. Australian tennis’s court jester is dead, long live the king.
Djokovic beats Tsitsipas to claim 22nd Grand Slam title and 10th Australian Open
Like a lot of Djokovic’s matches, it seemed close, but wasn’t. It ended 6-3, 7-6, 7-6. Once again, the chalk outline on the court was in the shape of Stefanos Tsitsipas.
On paper, Tsitsipas is the future of the sport. He’s a bigger Federer, a sort of Greek Army Knife of tennis weapons. But every time he faces Djokovic, he looks like a guy with his arm extended in horror while a slow-moving steamroller comes at him. A crushing is inevitable before it ever starts. It’s in the eyes.
Since he can’t impress by winning, Tsitsipas has decided to become the world’s most gracious loser.
“He is the greatest that has ever held a tennis racquet,” Tsitsipas said mournfully afterward. I guess you would call this praising yourself by association.
As he said it, Djokovic allowed himself a little Cheshire grin. It could only have been more perfect if he’d tried waving the compliment away.
This year’s Australian Open wasn’t a triumphal march. For Djokovic, it was more complicated and even more successful than that.
For two weeks, Djokovic showed that he has not reconciled himself to the tennis world. Instead, he expects it to reconcile itself to him. And it has.
His tennis was as per usual – so good, so metronomic, so predictable that it is almost boring. We won’t recognize how good Djokovic was until after he’s gone. He’s that sort of genius.
It was the off-court stuff where Djokovic really showed his dominance. The flashpoint was his father, Srdjan. You may remember Srdjan from his combustible press conferences last year while his son was in the process of being deported from Australia.
“Novak is the best player and the best athlete in the world, but several hundred million people from the West can’t stomach that,” the elder Djokovic said at the time. He berated Australia for holding his son in “captivity” and spoke darkly of an anti-Serbian plot.
This time, Srdjan Djokovic was photographed posing with fans holding Russian flags, which were banned at the tournament. He also posed next to a man wearing the ‘Z’ symbol synonymous with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is the most sensitive front of tennis’s constant effort to keep politics from infecting its business. It wasn’t just the flags in Melbourne. It was the inconvenience of a Belarusian (Aryna Sabalenka) beating a native Russian (Elena Rybakina) in the women’s final.
If the motto of this year’s Australian Open was ‘Don’t mention the war,’ the war kept popping into conversation anyway.
But Srdjan’s gaffe (if that’s what it was) was something else. Here was the family spokesperson for the sport’s greatest exponent seeming to endorse the war, and on the side of the bad guys.
What did tennis do? Nothing.
Srdjan was disappeared from his son’s box. Djokovic talked about his father like he’d fallen ill rather than made himself persona non grata.
“This was not easy for him,” Djokovic said. “I saw him after the [final] of course, and he was not feeling his best, let’s say … He’s a bit sad.”
If a bad player tried this tack, he’d be laughed out of the shop. He’s sad because he didn’t get to sit in the seat he preferred after publicly biting his thumb at the country that invited him over a year after he accused them of being part of a great Western conspiracy? Boo hoo.
If a good player tried it, he’d be given the courtesy of a proper media hearing, and then laughed out of the shop.
But when Djokovic does it, everyone nods along and agrees. Sad. Absolutely. Poor guy. Must be unbearable back there in the VIP suites near the buffet. I hear 5K isn’t nearly as good as everyone says.
On Sunday, Djokovic flexed in both critical areas of tennis – on and off the court. He is so good, and has overcome so much bad press, that no one wants to pick a fight with him again. Instead, tennis has surrendered to his inevitability.
The secret to all this is how lightly Djokovic wears his power. Whenever he talks, he’s all smiles. He uses soothing words and phrases. There’s no hint of irritation.
But you can now see the cracks when he’s on the court. In the past, his frustrations – and there weren’t that many – were pointed inward. Nowadays, he has become the Balkan Nick Kyrgios. His box is regularly targeted for difficult-to-figure, midmatch meltdowns. He had another one during the final.
“Normal chatter,” Djokovic called it afterward.
A symptom of grinding, just barely suppressed rage, I’d call it. But I’m no psychologist.
It’s gotten so compulsive that even Djokovic finds Djokovic’s behaviour erratic.
“If I am in the box and a guy is doing that to me, I would probably act differently,” Djokovic said. He smiled as he said it, but it didn’t sound like he was joking.
That aside, Djokovic was all shy gratefulness afterward. He had kind words for everyone, as well as a warning.
“I don’t want to stop here. I don’t have an intention to stop here,” Djokovic said.
There is an alternative universe in which COVID fizzled, Djokovic didn’t become an anti-vaxx poster boy and last year’s legal goonshow never happened. In that world, the 35-year-old star might be reclining into the golden years of his career.
But it did. And this Djokovic doesn’t look like he’s winding down anything. He looks like he’s just only just getting started settling scores.