Why the men's game needs a full-strength Novak Djokovic right now

It’s hard to remember a more abrupt and matter-of-fact ending to a major upset. Benoit Paire hit a deep return that landed near the baseline. Novak Djokovic, handcuffed by the pace of the shot, bunted the ball into the net. There was no celebration from Paire, and little more than stunned silence from the crowd in Miami.

Djokovic, after a brief shake of his head, flashed the Frenchman a smile and a hug at the net. As he walked off the court, he gave a quick wave to the crowd and was gone. A few minutes earlier, with the score 4-4 in the second set, that same crowd had urged Djokovic to rally, to raise his game, to...become himself again. Instead, he lost the last seven points of the match.

Match point, Paire vs. Djokovic:

First in Indian Wells and now in Miami, Djokovic moved through his matches—both of which were opening-round defeats to unseeded opponents—like a ghost of springs past. These are tournaments where he has won a collective 11 titles. From 2014 to 2016, he won them back to back three straight times, making the previously rare Sunshine Double look routine. When Djokovic won in Miami in 2016 without dropping a set, he appeared to have no rivals left to vanquish.

Two years and a serious elbow injury later, Djokovic returned to Key Biscayne looking withdrawn, physically and mentally. He was thinner, his serve had lost steam, and he even had trouble pulling off his patented hard-court slides—on one of those slides in the first set, he appeared to tweak his right ankle. When Paire powered the ball with pace, Djokovic struggled to answer in kind. When Paire flipped one his customary nonchalant drop shots across the net, Djokovic struggled to track it down. The old robustness had gone out his game.

“I’m just in general trying everything I can,” Djokovic said after his 6-3, 6-4 loss, which was over in 70 minutes. “It is what it is. I’m not at the level I used to be. I’m aware of that. I just have to obviously believe in myself and the rest will come.”

If there was one positive that Djokovic could take from the afternoon, it was the reaction of the Miami crowd. They supported him with sympathetic cries of, “Come on, Novak!” when he hung his head. They stood and cheered as he came back from 2-4 to 4-4 in the second set. For a minute, it seemed to help. At 4-4, Djokovic went up 0-15, and when Paire spun a second serve into the middle of the box, he moved around for one of his favorite shots, a forehand return. Instead of drilling it for a winner and pumping his fist, as he has so many times before, he floated the ball wide and slumped his shoulders again.

Djokovic in doubles at the Miami Open:

Djokovic, as we know, has not been his era’s most popular champion. But the Miami crowd seemed to sense that the men’s game is better with him at full strength, and that something is missing from the sport when he’s a ghost of his former self. For me, that fact was driven home by Juan Martin del Potro’s third-set-tiebreaker win over Roger Federer in Indian Wells last Sunday. It was the type of performance—fighting off a fierce Federer comeback—that Djokovic once specialized in, and which few other players have ever managed. In the 2015 Indian Wells final, it was the Serb who held off the Swiss in a third-set tiebreaker.

The co-renaissance of Federer and Rafael Nadal in 2017 was a welcome development. But as Del Potro’s win in Indian Wells showed, a challenge to their late-career supremacy would be welcome in 2018. Is Delpo the man for the job? He hasn’t been in the past. He’s still just 7-18 against Federer, and injuries have, sadly, tended to cut his surges short. Djokovic, on the other hand, has proven that he has staying power at the top.

While Federer has improved over the past two years, he has also benefitted from Djokovic’s absence. At Wimbledon in 2014 and 2015, at the US Open in 2015, and at the Australian Open in 2016, Federer looked unbeatable, until he faced Djokovic. Something similar can be said for Nadal. Djokovic is the only player who has consistently challenged, and beaten, Rafa on clay. Last year, with Djokovic on the downslope, Nadal went back to dominating on dirt.

Federer and Nadal don’t need to prove they can beat a healthy Djokovic, but without him the men’s game won’t feel complete. I can’t be the only one who would like to see how the Roger and Rafa of 2017-2018 would match up against the Serb at his best. Djokovic will be 31 next month, and he’ll be entering the clay swing, which is the most taxing stretch of the season; that’s obviously not ideal for a man in mid-comeback. By today’s standards, though, he should still have more years of top-level tennis in him. If the crowd in Miami on Friday is any indication, tennis fans want to see it. They want to see this ghost of springs past come back to life and become himself again.

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