Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
The men’s tennis GOAT argument is settled after the Olympics.
Novak Djokovic was running out of things to conquer.
He had hoisted every trophy that professional men’s tennis had put in front of him. He had captured each of the Grand Slams at least three times among his record 24 total. He had held the Association of Tennis Professionals’ No. 1 ranking for a record 428 weeks, or just over eight full years, and was the oldest man ever to hold that spot. He won the ATP Tour Finals a record eight times, had defeated Top-5 ranked players a record-123 times and outlasted every opponent that thought they could one day conquer him.
Out of trophies to lift or statistics to flaunt, Djokovic merely lacked a simple piece of neck-wear, more recognizable for swimmers than tennis players: the Olympic Gold Medal. It was the lone hardware that other men’s tennis players could hold over him, with greats like Andre Agassi, Andy Murray, and Rafael Nadal capturing the medal that he never could.
It was all but certain that Djokovic was the greatest men’s tennis player of all-time already, but now it is actually certain. On Sunday, he finally took Olympic Gold over Carlos Alcaraz, just like he had taken everything else the sport had made for him. With it, fell the last statistical barrier to the Serbian maestro’s infallible case as the greatest of all time, but it is unlikely to slow him down. When asked if he would be defending his Gold Medal at the age of 41 four years from now, Djokovic mustered the only answer that made sense.
“I would love to play in Los Angeles in 2028.”
Djokovic also plans to head to the US Open at the end of August to defend his crown there. But left with nothing else to conquer and no one approaching the scale and grandeur of his legacy, why keep at it? At 37 years old, Djokovic has already proven everything, said everything and won everything. Any argument for another player being the greatest of all time is now moot. Why stay the king of men’s tennis, since everyone is already well in line?
Because, for Novak Djokovic, the tyranny is the point, and imagination is the only limit.
The Olympic Gold medal holds a special spot in tennis. It’s not one of the four Grand Slams, but for the best of the best it can be even more elusive. Very few players, male or female, have achieved the “Career Golden Slam,” or winning all four majors plus the Olympic Gold Medal. With only one shot at it every four years and a variable surface and format, it’s trickier than the other big prizes.
But Djokovic just had to have it. It was the only “blemish” anyone could find on his otherwise sterling tournament record. One measly bronze medal in a 20+ year tennis career? Surely the king of men’s tennis could do better than that. And even Carlos Alcaraz, who maybe thought he had cracked the Djokovic equation having beaten him in their last two Grand Slam Final meetings, was powerless to stop it.
For Novak Djokovic, the tyranny is the point, and imagination is the only limit.
Djokovic is a crazed competitor, committed to the infinite perfection of himself and the wholesale destruction of his opponents. Of men’s tennis’ legendary “Big Three” — consisting of Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer — only Djokovic became adept at conquering every type of opponent. Federer struggled with powerful serves throughout his career, while Nadal wasn’t nearly the player on grass as he was on clay.
But Djokovic always figured it out. Equipped with a supercomputer brain hard-coded to win tennis matches, Djokovic would always exploit the one thing, even if it was only one thing, that could bring down his opponent. As he navigated a long and complex Olympic Final against Alcaraz, Djokovic forced him to make decisions at the net in critical moments, perhaps Alcaraz’s single immaturity in an otherwise airtight game.
Like he had a million times before, Djokovic drew the Spaniard out of his sizeable comfort zone and placed him in the exact spot where he could actually be beaten. Unable to break Alcaraz’s serve even once, Djokovic brought him to two tiebreakers and forced his opponent to play perfectly. Each unforced error became a whole game, and he rightly bet that he could win the battle of perfection.
Djokovic never hit the hardest forehands, never had the highest spin rate on his top-spin or hit the fastest serves in the game. He lacked the single weapon of mass destruction that other top players often crutched on. But he was always the most precise the most often, and it has made him almost impossible to beat.
Just as important to his success (at least if you ask him), is how Djokovic manages his body. He is a possessed fitness junkie, and perhaps the secret to his longevity is his relentless commitment to perfecting his physique. In his book about his vegan diet and legendary training philosophy, nothing cuts through the page like this story from after he defeated Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open Final, a match sometimes tagged as one of the greatest in history.
“I wanted one thing: to taste chocolate. I hadn’t tasted it since the summer of 2010. Miljan [Amanovic] brought me a candy bar. I broke off one square—one tiny square—and popped it into my mouth, let it melt on my tongue,” Djokovic wrote. “That was all I would allow myself. That is what it has taken to get to number one.”
This obsession with control over his body has manifested in problematic ways as well, such as his highly-public refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, which resulted in him voluntarily missing major tournaments. This self-centered move was just as deplorable and unscientific as any anti-vaxx statement, but was consistent with his own obsession with controlling what goes in and out of his body. Greatness is an obsession, and sometimes obsessions manifest in unhealthy ways.
Even with the voluntarily missed opportunities at even more Grand Slams, Djokovic still stands alone with the most. Complete with the rest of his accomplishments, his case as the greatest men’s tennis player of all time is all but airtight. But why the “all but”?
Because there is maybe one thing left for him to conquer. But don’t hold your breath: it’s probably impossible.
In the entire history of professional men’s tennis, only one man has captured the “Calendar Grand Slam,” or winning all four majors in a single year. The Australian Rod Laver did it in 1969, and nobody has managed it since. Not Nadal, not Federer, not Djokovic. It’s considered so difficult that it isn’t usually put on lists of career accomplishments like the Olympic Gold Medal is. It’s just unrealistic with the modern level of competition, but even among the modern failures, Djokovic was by far the closest.
He was right there three times, winning three of the four Grand Slams and reaching the final of the fourth in 2015, 2021 and 2023. But only in 2021 did he enter the US Open, the final major of the year, with the other three already won, prompting eventual champion Daniil Medvedev to declare war on Djokovic and win.
“We are here to not let him win the US Open,” said Medvedev before the 2021 tournament. And then he did just that.
Why was Djokovic unable to do it sooner when he was in his physical prime? It’s true that Nadal and Federer often stymied Djokovic on clay and grass courts, but his 2015 failure at the French Open ironically came at the hands of Stan Wawrinka, a true historical oddity in the long history of Nadal dominance in Paris.
Perhaps Djokovic choked, or just got unlucky. But the margin for error for the Calendar Grand Slam is razor-thin, and with an evolved Carlos Alcaraz unlikely to drop two hard court tournaments in one year, time may not be on Djokovic’s side. But it remains true that Djokovic sees a player in Laver that has something he does not, which may make his competitive spirit burn with insecurity. And it’s unlikely he’ll take that lying down.
In any case, Djokovic’s superpower has always been figuring it out, no matter how unlikely. With no actual hardware left to chase, maybe it is time to run down the impossible, even as the years start to catch up with Djokovic and his body. If that’s what he has in mind, it will all start with the Australian Open in January.
The Olympic Gold Medal cemented what most tennis fans already knew, but Djokovic himself probably doesn’t care about cementing his GOAT status. For him, it’s about winning. Winning everything, over and over and over. Never being satisfied. Never quitting, no matter how good or how bad his opponents are and no matter how redundant it may all seem. Keep pushing, keep dominating and keep dictating the direction of men’s tennis until the strings fall off his racket.
Even though it’s almost impossible to picture him going any higher, it somehow also feels inevitable. Because you know he’s already imagining it.
