Alcaraz vs. Djokovic: The Next Kid Up takes on the game’s most steely brain

Almost every time, there comes a time when a younger player seizes the advantage over Novak Djokovic, with plans to knock him from his place at the top of tennis.

It doesn’t matter how deep a hole Djokovic has dug for himself, or how well the whipsnapper plays on the other side of the net.

Perhaps Djokovic is two sets behind, as he was two years ago against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the French Open final and last year against Jannik Sinner in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Perhaps Djokovic is limping down the field injured after leveling his opponent, as he was after four sets against Taylor Fritz at the 2021 Australian Open, when he tore an abdominal muscle and coughed up a two-set lead.

Then the other man starts to think he’s about to start something big, just like Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish sensation, might do Friday at the French Open in his semifinal showdown with Djokovic, a match that will see the sport has been demanding since the spring of 2022.

The racquet gets a little heavier, the elbow a little tighter, as Djokovic’s enemies begin to envision victory. After all these years, all these matches in the deep end of a Grand Slam tournament, Djokovic, 36, can see it from a mile away.

He doesn’t have to. Djokovic, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, is within 25 yards and he believes in his heart that everything is about to go his way.

It happened again on Tuesday after more than two hours of fighting Karen Khachanov in the quarterfinals. Khachanov, the big, burly Russian with a hammer-like serve and forehand and nearly a decade less mileage on his legs, had won the first set and forced a tiebreak in the second. He had his opening.

Or not. A perfect 7-0 tiebreak leveled Djokovic. A break of service in the first game of the next set gave him the lead. Khachanov was ready.

“The energy of the court shifted to my side,” Djokovic said after sending off Khachanov.

But when Djokovic takes on Alcaraz, who has taken over the No. 1 ranking from him twice in the past nine months, it will be a test against the youth like Djokovic has never experienced before. The two only played once, in May 2022, in Madrid; Djokovic and Alcaraz kept missing each other for one reason or another in the 13 months since.

“A complete player,” 21-year-old Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti, an Alcaraz fourth-round victim this week, said of the player he got to know on the European junior circuit.

Individual moments when one generation takes over from another can feel like the shifting of tectonic plates. Once in a while, men’s tennis delivers a torchlight: Pete Sampras rips through John McEnroe at the 1990 US Open; Roger Federer defeats Sampras on Center Court at Wimbledon in 2001. Is another one imminent?

Daniil Medvedev, the world’s second player and the only player in his 20s to currently beat Djokovic in a Grand Slam final, said not long ago that it’s almost impossible to beat Djokovic without first losing to him several times . Opponents have to get used to his shot patterns and his relentless ability to make them hit another ball after they think they’ve ended the point.

Not so for Alcaraz. Alcaraz defeated Djokovic in their only encounter, no less in a deciding set tiebreak (albeit in a best-of-three-sets match). So far, Alcaraz has shown none of the vulnerability his contemporaries showed against Djokovic in big moments, or even the players a few years older than him who were supposed to be the next generation of tennis stars.

“I really want to play that game,” Alcaraz said late on Tuesday evening after blasting through Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals to win the confrontation with Djokovic. “I’m going to enjoy it.”

Maybe.

One of the age-old sayings about sports in general and tennis in particular is that by the time athletes have gained the wisdom and experience necessary to truly crack the code of their sport, their bodies have betrayed them. Djokovic has given this idea a run for its money.

That’s not a coincidence. He hardly ever drinks alcohol. He tries to sleep eight and a half hours a night, with a focus on his main REM sleep hours. His post-game gymnastics and stretches sometimes look as tough as a normal person’s workout.

It’s also hard to argue that tennis has a healthier, more developed brain. Djokovic long ago redrawn the angles of the game, found new shots to hit and new ways to win matches and titles, becoming the world’s top ranked player at a time when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray made it so difficult if it ever had been. Today, he changes the pace and rhythm of runs with ease, as a baseball pitcher mixes fastballs, curveballs, sinkers, and substitutions in every at bat. And then he uses a serve-and-volley like an eighties player, to make sure everyone knows he can do it too.

He has spent years exchanging notes on mental strength with superstar athletes in tennis and other sports – Boris Becker, Kobe Bryant, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to name a few. He meditates. He knows how to focus when he shouldn’t like anyone else. He has played five tiebreaks in this tournament without committing an unforced error.

Djokovic is approaching his 45th Grand Slam semifinal and has become a master of the five-set format, the almost inevitable emotional dips and swings. He seems to spend the first set collecting information about his opponent. If he loses that set, as he did in the last two Wimbledon finals, or even the next one, it’s no big deal. There’s still plenty of time.

“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” said Khachanov. “He’s always trying to find a way.”

Whether that will work against Alcaraz is Friday’s big mystery. Alcaraz has so far shown so many of the advantages of youth – speed, strength, power, the optimism of a player who hardly has bad days – and so few of the pitfalls. He plays with a kind of boundless joy and freedom that other players find hard to comprehend, just as they struggle with the speed of his forehand and unparalleled improvisation.

Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach, said he always wanted to be one step ahead. When he played Futures tournaments, in the sport’s third tier, he thought he was ready for Challengers, the second tier; when he played Challengers he thought he was ready for the main tour.

“He can make any shot on the pitch,” Ferrero said. “If you ask him to go to the net in a match point, he can. Or if I ask to come back and go to the net, he is able to do it and make the drop shot.

He can play long or short points. Whatever the moment calls for.

After Tuesday evening, Tsitsipas lost to both Djokovic and Alcaraz on the field where the two will face each other on Friday. Like everyone else, Tsitsipas said he envisioned the game as a showdown between the game’s most sophisticated brain, a player trying to maneuver his opponent and control every shot, and the game’s purest and fastest talents.

“One has experience, the other has legs and moves like Speedy Gonzales,” said Tsitsipas. “You can hit huge, super-sized shots; and the other prefers precision, to apply pressure and make his opponent move as much as possible.”

Who will win?

“I’m rooting for the kids,” Tsitsipas said.

Against Djokovic they need all the help they can get.