For nearly two decades, the last place any player wanted to be was locked in a tug-of-war with Novak Djokovic. The longer the match, the more physical the battle, the more inevitable he became.
Now, at 39, the physical battle has turned inward.
The meticulously maintained body that carried Djokovic to a men’s record 24 Grand Slam titles may be the biggest obstacle standing between him and No. 25.
Earlier this month, the Cincinnati Open was to be Djokovic’s pre-US Open tuneup. In his first match since Wimbledon, he was cruising against heavy underdog Thiago Agustin Tirante when his body suddenly began to betray him. During an exhausting 18-minute service game at 1-1 in the second set, Djokovic struggled visibly in the heat and humidity, eventually receiving medical attention and appearing to vomit in a towel. He soldiered on, but Tirante rallied for a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 upset victory.
What Djokovic revealed afterward was more concerning than the loss.
“It’s just a condition that I have, health-wise, that has been bothering me for the past couple of years,” he said, adding that it causes “a lot of issues, especially when it is humid and it is hot.”
He offered no diagnosis or additional explanation. Now, with the US Open getting underway, those around the Tour are left wondering what it could mean for Djokovic and the tournament.
“If it’s a chronic illness, what is it? And how’s that going to hold up over three out of five sets for two weeks?” Paul Annacone, a coach and former player who currently works with American Taylor Fritz, told The Post.
Patrick McEnroe, the former player and longtime ESPN analyst, was struck by how badly Djokovic appeared to be suffering in Cincinnati.
“He seemed quite sick,” McEnroe told The Post. “Maybe he had some sort of a virus, and anytime you play in the heat that would exacerbate that a ton.”
Still, McEnroe expects Djokovic to be “pretty dialed in for New York,” where a likely slate of night matches could provide relief from the Open’s often sweltering conditions.
Under most circumstances, Cincinnati would sound another alarm in an increasingly familiar discussion about Djokovic’s age and potential retirement. He’s pushing 40, hasn’t won a tournament this season and has played only 20 matches all year.
Except these are not normal circumstances.
Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1 and reigning Wimbledon champion, has withdrawn from the US Open with a right knee injury. Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion and the man who defeated Djokovic in this year’s Australian Open final, will play his first competitive tournament in more than four months after a right wrist injury sidelined him in April. The two have combined to win 10 of the last 11 Grand Slam titles.
Of Djokovic’s nine completed Slam losses since his last major title, seven have come against them: four to Sinner and three to Alcaraz. With his two biggest hurdles either absent or underprepared, Djokovic —who is set to play Mariano Navone, a 25-year-old Argentinian who is ranked 48, in the first round on Sunday — has a golden opportunity.
“This is exactly the scenario that validates his continuing to play,” said Jon Wertheim, a Sports Illustrated writer who has covered Djokovic since he turned pro in 2003, told The Post. “You catch a couple of breaks in the draw — Sinner’s not here, Alcaraz is a big question mark. And suddenly, maybe this is the 25th major. Maybe this is the set of circumstances he’s been waiting for.”
That Djokovic remains in the conversation as a true contender is remarkable on its own. His last major title came at the 2023 US Open, yet he has continued to reach the business end of the sport’s biggest tournaments with a consistency never seen from a player his age. This season, he reached the Australian Open final — beating Sinner in the semifinals — and the Wimbledon semifinals, though his play on smaller stages was inconsistent.
“His results in majors are obviously much different from his results in conventional events,” Wertheim, who is also a co-host/contributor to the “Served with Andy Roddick” podcast, said. “So his results coming in don’t really have much value in terms of predicting.”
All this comes around the release on August 20 of the new documentary “Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter.” The film explores Djokovic’s uneasy relationship with the end of his career and the increasing toll required to prolong it. Director Jason Hehir has said Djokovic initially resisted even discussing retirement during production.
“I know a lot of people are retiring me already, for many years,” the tennis great says in the film. “Why would I talk about retirement when I am proving to myself that I can still win?”
Djokovic also confides that at this stage, recuperating mentally from a match can present an even greater challenge than his physical recovery.
“It’s like the brain has had enough,” he says in the doc, while trying to rehab a muscle tear ahead of the 2025 Australian Open semifinal, a match he would retire from after one set.
That has become the defining challenge of late-career Djokovic. The championship level can still appear almost on command. Sustaining it — and recovering quickly enough to summon it again two days later —is another matter.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Open is within his grasp,” Annacone said. “My only doubt is, can he do three out of five sets over seven matches?”
That vulnerability, once inconceivable, is what gives the rest of the draw hope. Opponents remain in awe of Djokovic’s accomplishments; less so of the player across the net.
“I don’t think the intimidation factor is what it was. I mean, how could it be?” McEnroe said. “There’s definitely many more players that go out there thinking they’ve got a decent shot against him, especially on a hard court. More to the point, I think a lot of players should feel like that they can outlast him.”
Former player, Tour coach and longtime broadcaster Brad Gilbert sees a similar shift, particularly among younger players who don’t carry what he calls the “scar tissue” of repeated losses to Djokovic that veterans such as Alexander Zverev, 29, and the 28-year-old Fritz have.
“He’s not playing the same, and so they go out on the court with different expectations,” Gilbert said.
Curiously, Djokovic recently floated a few radical rule changes designed to shorten matches. In an early-August interview with content creator Nick Knows Ball, he proposed four-game sets or no-ad scoring in an effort to retain best-of-five matches while preventing them from turning into marathons for players and viewers.
The suggestion raised eyebrows coming from one of the game’s great warriors. Days later, he was kneecapped by that 18-minute service game in Cincinnati that illustrated exactly what his proposal would eliminate.
It would be convenient to interpret the suggestion as Djokovic seeking to accommodate his own diminishing reserves. It would also be unfair. Djokovic has discussed making tennis more digestible for younger audiences before, and the latest proposal appeared more test balloon than deeply held crusade.
“I wonder if it isn’t a function of him having two kids and seeing their attention span and seeing how kids consume media and entertainment and content and sports,” Wertheim said, rather than “selfishly trying to bend the rules to a 39-year-old.”
As the US Open gets underway, the irony is that Djokovic has been here before, albeit under different circumstances. In the early part of his career, opponents openly questioned his mettle. It came to a head at the 2008 US Open, when Andy Roddick famously mocked the Serb’s many reported ailments before their quarterfinal, jokingly adding bird flu, anthrax and SARS to the list. Djokovic went on to beat him in a contentious four sets.
No one doubts his toughness anymore.
Eighteen years later, Djokovic returns to New York with perhaps his clearest opening in years to add to his record-setting Grand Slam haul — and once again faces a question he spent his career making irrelevant:
Is his body up to the challenge?
