NEW YORK — It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Twenty-six days after winning Olympic gold in Paris, Novak Djokovic ended his second-least profitable Grand Slam season since 2009 with a stunning third-round defeat to Alexei Popyrin at the US Open. With just months left on the 2024 tennis calendar, he could end the year without a tour-level title for the first time since 2005 while securing what he describes as the “biggest achievement of his career.”
When was it ever an either/or situation for Djokovic? The 24-time major winner is generally only satisfied if he wins everything. Settling for less is generally anathema to the man who has dominated tennis, with the occasional blip or two, since early 2011.
As is so often the case in this sport, father time is undefeated. At 37, perhaps the moment has finally arrived that was always coming. Not in a steep decline, nor an end to his relevance at Grand Slam tournaments. Simply that he has become a player who can still reach the heights occasionally, but not always and not all season long.
Players who have beaten him include Alejandro Tabilo, Tomas Machac, Luca Nardi and now Popyrin. His major defeats to his two greatest rivals, Jannik Sinner in Australia and Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon, were both hopelessly one-sided. That Djokovic reached the Wimbledon final just six weeks after surgery on the medial meniscus in his right knee is testament to the fact that he can still be a force at Grand Slams. That Alcaraz defeated him so easily in that final is testament to the sense that his defeats now, after so long, have the potential to turn ugly very quickly.
Novak Djokovic left New York this year without a Grand Slam title to his name. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
It happened against Popyrin, in front of 24,000 spectators on Arthur Ashe. Djokovic has been recovering for months, slowly increasing his physical effort and in that time his game has necessarily suffered. His ball-striking and tactical nose are still there and he has even added a turbo boost when he needs it, most memorably when he hit two forehands past Alcaraz in the second set tiebreak at the Olympics.
His thoughts after his defeat against Popyrin did not take that into account.
“I played one of the worst tennis matches I’ve ever played, honestly. I served by far the worst I’ve ever served,” Djokovic told reporters during a brief post-match press conference as Friday night turned into Saturday morning.
Since returning from surgery, his service motion has been awkward, particularly on the follow-through. He looked wobbly when he landed, often stumbling on the court. But the ball still went into the penalty area. That wasn’t the case at this tournament, where he made 52 percent of his first serves, against a career average in the mid-60s. He hit 32 double faults in 38 service games in three rounds.
He also acknowledged that it was difficult to come here so soon after the height of the Olympics, and that he wasn’t really in the right state to compete. “I put a lot of effort into winning the gold, and when I got to New York I didn’t feel fresh mentally and physically,” he said.
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“But because it’s the US Open, I tried and did my best.”
This is all perfectly understandable — it’s just, this is Djokovic. Aside from the 2016-18 slump after completing the career Grand Slam, what’s so remarkable about him is his ability to keep going, even as he ticks off one monumental achievement after another.
That wasn’t the case against Popyrin. He looked lifeless, struggling to rouse himself as he normally does, and was noticeably quiet—hardly making a sound when he hit the ball—even in moments of great exertion and stress. The crowd played half-heartedly. The exciting matches were invariably against him, rather than for him. The familiar rope-a-dope in the first set that culminates in a dominant four-set victory never came.
In the third set and the beginning of the fourth, when Popyrin collapsed on serves, missed and made a fool of himself, it seemed as if the inevitable was coming. But it wasn’t the inevitable of the last 20 years that was coming. It was the inevitable of the last eight months.
Alexei Popyrin overcame a mid-match setback to take control of the fourth set. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
As his Grand Slam season draws to a close, the phenomenal achievement of winning Olympic gold increasingly looks like a gleaming distraction, in analytical terms. Nothing can diminish the magnitude of doing so at 37, not least Djokovic’s reaction to collapsing to the clay, shaking with tears, but it has still been a suitably disappointing year for him. There are extenuating circumstances – not just Djokovic’s knee, but also the fact that he was hit on the head by a metal water bottle in Rome – that have made reaching his usual heights even more challenging.
He will return for the Australian Open, desperate to reclaim the title he has won 10 times from Jannik Sinner, but what happened on Friday was no blip. It was not a world-shattering result like the 2016 Wimbledon loss to Sam Querrey that rocked the tennis world. Losing to Popyrin, who narrowly beat him at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year, was in line with many of his defeats this year.
Winning in Paris was the outlier, and while a Grand Slam final, semifinal and quarterfinal is a year that the vast majority of players at any age would retire from, that’s not how Djokovic thinks. He had won a major title every year since 2010, except 2017, until 2024.
“If I look at it from a broader perspective, of course I have to be happy,” Djokovic said when asked to take a long-term view of himself. Whether Djokovic can reset his goals in the next year or so, and whether he’s happy with it, will be one of the defining stories in tennis in 2025.
(Top photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
