Novak Djokovic and a hug from a friend: The most enduring images of 2023

“Enduring Images” is what the Washington Post called its round-up of the paper’s most significant photos from around the world in 2023. Looking through its mix of the celebratory and the deadly, I wondered what would qualify as the most enduring images from the past tennis season. Fortunately in sports, unlike in war and politics, you get the emotion without the destruction.

You also get to decide for yourself—or our minds get to decide for us. Ask 10 tennis fans to name the moments that jump into their heads first from the past season, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. Without trying, you also may find that a happy memory quickly bleeds into another, less-pleasant one.

One of the first images that comes to me from 2023 is Juan Carlos Ferrero holding his hands to his head after watching his player, Carlos Alcaraz, come up with a seemingly impossible passing-shot angle against Novak Djokovic in their briefly-torrid semifinal at Roland Garros. A second later, though, I’m fast-forwarding to the sight of a cramping Alcaraz doubled over and unable to move. That day, the Spaniard was tennis’s version of Icarus—a young man who flew too close to the Parisian sun.

Letting my mind roam over the season, I find it touching down mostly at the Grand Slams. The knowledge that whatever happens at those tournaments will become part of the sport’s history seems to make them more vivid in the present.

Enduring 2023 images for me include:

• Ons Jabeur leaning against the back tarp in Centre Court, trying to stay upright as an attack nerves debilitated her during the Wimbledon final. Many of us know what it feels like to have anxiety turn to panic; I can only imagine what it feels like to have it happen in front of the world.
• Coco Gauff rifling a backhand winner and falling to the court, a new US Open champion. And then her mom, Candi, dancing wildly in the aisle when she saw the ball land in. It was the celebration of a woman who will never have to hear anyone ask, “Can Coco win the big one?” ever again.

• Alcaraz seeing an open court, and driving a backhand through it to break Djokovic in the fifth set of the Wimbledon final. The arena went silent as the court opened up, and then an explosion of cheers filled the void when he made the shot. Alcaraz, it appeared, had learned from his Icarus-like mistakes at Roland Garros. But by the end of the season, after no more titles, he seemed to have unlearned those lessons again.
• Two images from the great Roland Garros semifinal between Karolina Muchova and Aryna Sabalenka. First, Muchova taking one long, powerful slide from the service line all the way to the net, to close on a backhand volley with perfectly graceful technique. Second, Sabalenka walking off after blowing a big third-set lead with a bemused smile on her face. It was the look of someone who believes she’ll be back here, and she won’t always blow leads like this.
• Iga Swiatek screaming and pounding her heart in celebration after beating Sabalenka in the semifinals at the WTA Finals in Cancun. This was a long, sometimes frustrating, season for Swiatek, who lost her US Open title and the No. 1 ranking. But it all came back together in that final moment, and she showed how much it meant with her spontaneous, unbridled reaction.

And how about Djokovic? There are obviously plenty of moments to choose from. Considering that he’s 36, this may have been the best season of his career. He came up just one match short of the Grand Slam for the second time, finished No. 1, and held off perhaps the stiffest challenge from a younger player yet, in Alcaraz. He endured a tough defeat at Wimbledon, and then didn’t lose again until November.

By that point, Djokovic seemed once again to have gone beyond normal human limits. No matter who the opponent was, or how well he was playing, there was no question Djokovic would find a way to beat him. He had mastered tennis in a way no one had before him. He was unlike the rest of us mortals who, as the saying goes, can’t win them all.

Maybe that’s why the memory that stays with me of Djokovic's 2023 came at the end of one his rare defeats: to Jannik Sinner in Davis Cup. The loss was even more unusual because Djokovic had triple match point, but failed to finish. For once, his opponent, the unyielding Sinner, was the one who brought himself back from the brink.

Djokovic wanted a Davis Cup win for Serbia as much as he wanted anything all season. When it was over, though, he congratulated Sinner with no bitterness and quickly fell into a hug with his captain and former teammate, Viktor Troicki. Djokovic threw his right arm around Troicki, while Troicki put his left hand up to Djokovic’s face, before they broke apart and continued on to the sideline.

The moment was just a moment; it didn’t last long. You might not even notice it if you watched the replay of the match today. But it felt momentous to me at the time. In that split second, Djokovic went from God to human again, and made himself more relatable in the process. Rather than the flawless, all-conquering champion we saw for most of the year, he was another person who could use a hug from a friend.

He was like the rest of us mortals once more, which only made his accomplishments of 2023 seem that much more extraordinary.