Sipu Jha
Richard Feynman’s autobiography Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman is one of the funniest physics reads, certainly funnier than the physics textbooks engineering students had to wade through. The title is based on a moment at Princeton when Feynman was offered tea by the Dean’s wife, who asked him: “Would you like lemon or cream?” Feynman, not familiar with British etiquette or perhaps subtly hinting at the duality of nature that would later become accepted in quantum mechanics, replied: “Both.” To which the Dean’s wife said: “Surely, you are joking, Mr Feynman,” because mixed together lemon and cream would curdle.For some reason, one was reminded of Feynman while watching Novak Djokovic make light of reality, biomechanics, the concept of time as we understand it, and the extent to which we can push a human body. Oh, and a guy called Sinner. Because, surely, you are (d)joking, Mr Novak?At an age where most of us get tired watching nine hours of tennis — no matter how sumptuous the dish that is served up — and getting up awkwardly from the couch can lead to a back spasm, Djokovic went toe to toe with a guy 14 years his junior. To put it in context, when Djokovic turned professional, Sinner wasn’t even two years old. His opponent for Sunday’s final, Carlos Alcaraz, hadn’t been born.And yet in Melbourne, after four hours and nine minutes of punishment and an audit of human endurance, Djokovic collapsed as the winner at Rod Laver Arena. He came back from two sets down. He broke his five-match losing streak against Sinner. He saved 16 out of 18 break points, including eight break points across two service games.The term GOAT is thrown around with wanton abandon these days, but no GOAT has been as persistently questioned as Novak. Take this write-up in The Guardian when Djokovic won his 23rd Grand Slam: “Suppose a tennis player comes along who is 10 feet tall. Every serve is an ace. He never loses a service game. He wins 30 grand slams. Is he the GOAT? No. The idea is ridiculous…” The hypothetical was meant to argue that greatness cannot exist in a vacuum. Djokovic, apparently, exists in a permanent asterisk.Or take the recent interview question where he was asked how it felt “chasing” Sinner and Alcaraz after spending his career chasing Rafa and Roger.A beleaguered Djokovic asked: “I’m chasing Jannik and Carlos? In which sense? So I’m always the chaser, and I’m never being chased? … there’s probably about a 15-year period in between where I was dominating the Grand Slams.”It’s a remarkable statistic. Between 2015 and 2023, Novak Djokovic won 24 out of the 61 Slams he was allowed to play. Wimbledon 2020 was cancelled due to Covid and he was barred from playing the 2022 US Open and 2022 Australian Open because he refused the vaccine. In that sense, he was stripped of opportunity in his prime, not unlike Muhammad Ali when he was barred from boxing for refusing the Vietnam draft.While he has disassociated himself from the anti-vax movement, Djokovic has defended his decision, saying: “The principles of decision making on my body are more important than any title or anything else.”He beat Roger Federer 27 times and Rafael Nadal 30 times. Not a bad record for someone accused of chasing the duo. Djokovic’s rise was more complicated than his peers, even training inside a disused swimming pool at one point. His climb coincided with the existence of two players who seemed unbeatable. And yet he found a way to beat them both often enough to rewrite the hierarchy.For most of the 2026 Australian Open, the received wisdom was that a SinCaraz final was inevitable and the rest of the tournament could have been an email. And yet inevitability remains tennis’s favourite illusion. Alcaraz needed mythical reserves to escape Zverev. Sinner arrived in the semi-final playing near-perfect tennis. Djokovic arrived carrying doubt, a creaking body, and a draw that had spared his legs but not his reputation. He was extremely lucky to get two byes, something he even acknowledged.Read: The agony of being Zverev in the age of Alcaraz The idea that Djokovic can ever truly be an underdog sounds absurd. But against a player many describe as a younger version of himself, he was one. Sinner struck 72 winners. He served 26 aces. For long stretches, he looked like the better athlete, the cleaner hitter, the future arriving on schedule. Djokovic responded with something older than tactics: stubbornness elevated to art.Yet Djokovic refused to be bullied, standing at the baseline and redirecting the violence.
Novak Djokovic (AI-generated Infografic)
A victory on Sunday would make him the outright leader in Grand Slam singles titles with 25, ahead of Margaret Court. He is already two ahead of Nadal’s 22. But numbers have long since stopped explaining Djokovic. They only outline the shape of the thing.“Please allow me to introduce myself,” Mick Jagger sang in Sympathy for the Devil. Twenty-two years into his career, Djokovic is still introducing himself, and us, to the infinite depth of human spirit and resilience. He was supposed to have been gone by now, enjoying margaritas, riding into the sunset with his peers. But he refuses to ride on, even when it’s evident how difficult it is to carry on.Between the Federer–Nadal domination and the Sinner–Alcaraz emergence, Djokovic somehow made winning look inevitable in both eras. He is the rare champion who succeeded at both ends of a generational shift — first by ending the Federer–Nadal duopoly, and then by holding off those meant to succeed them until Sinner and Alcaraz finally stamped their authority. Most athletes are lucky to be the GOAT of one era. Djokovic bridged two.One day the body will give out, when physics will reassert itself and space-time and the wave function will collapse. But like Arya Stark told the God of Death: not today. Today is still about being awestruck by a man who has done it all but still wanted to remind us of his abilities.Sunday’s showdown will decide outright history. Either Carlos Alcaraz will become the youngest man ever to complete a Career Grand Slam or Novak Djokovic will win his 25th major at 38. Surely, you are (d)joking, Mr Novak? But we all know the Djoker jokes about everything else except winning, where he is dead serious.Maybe the Dean’s wife was right. Lemon and cream don’t belong together. Age and dominance don’t mix. Physics and biomechanics should curdle ambition. And yet Novak Djokovic keeps pouring both into the same cup and asking the universe — and the rest of us — to lap it in.
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