Djokovic seeks to close his best season with the conquest of the Salad Bowl
A tennis player can complete a better season who has been one match away from squaring the Grand Slam in the year in which he surpassed Rafael Nadal and settled with a total of 24 majors, won his seventh Masters Cup, undoing the equality that remained at the top with Roger Federer, rose to 40 titles in the Masters 1000 with his victories in Cincinnati and Paris-Bercy, closed his eighth year as world number 1 and this Monday became the first tennis player to reach the 400 weeks on the ATP roof?
Novak Djokovic can still add the Davis Cup, whose final phase begins this Tuesday at the Martín Carpena Pavilion in Malaga, to such a formidable harvest. Already champion of the tournament at the head of Serbia in 2010, he decided months ago that this competition would be a priority, surely because, at 36 years old, and being a 2024 Olympian, there will be few opportunities left for him to fully commit himself to this collective task again. .
Serbia will debut against Great Britain this Thursday in the quarterfinals and is at the bottom of the table, so it would have as its rival the winner of the match between Italy and Holland. At the top, Canada will face Finland this Tuesday and the Czech Republic will face Australia this Wednesday. Djokovic will lead a team that is completed by Laslo Djere, 33rd, Dusan Lajovic, 46th, Miomor Kecmanovic, 55th, and Hamad Medjedovic, 111th.
Viktor Troicki, with whom he shared his time as a player, is the captain of a group where no decision is made without Djokovic's approval, which he takes and puts in when choosing the man who will line up at each intersection as number two.
Great Britain, with Cameron Norrie, 18th, and Jack Draper, as well as Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski, 7th and 9th in the doubles specialty, and Italy, with Jannik Sinner, 4th and recent finalist in Turin, and Lorenzo Musetti, 27th, They happen to be the two most powerful teams globally in this Davis Cup. Canada, without Denis Shapovalov and with Felix Auger-Aliassime mired in a deep crisis, will have a very difficult time retaining the title.
Squaring the circle
Rod Laver, double winner of the four majors in the same season, Donald Budge and Fred Perry, who signed him only once, closed incomparable courses to date. Beyond them, it is difficult to find achievements analogous to those of Djokovic in the same year. You need to look in your own mirror.
In 2015 he won a total of 11 titles, finished number 1, was also one match away from winning the Grand Slam and closed with victory at the ATP Finals. In 2011 (with 10 tournaments won and closing at the zenith) and 2021 (the year in which Daniil Medvedev deprived him of eternal glory in New York) he also won a hat trick in the majors and finished with the best number, but he did not raise his head in the last port.
«The year 2015 was one of the best, probably the best I have ever had, with 19 consecutive finals in all tournaments and three of the four Grand Slams. I had a very good 18 months between that year and the middle of 2016,” he said in Turin after winning the final against Sinner.. «Moments in time are different for me. I don't try to play like I did ten years ago. I have to choose the tournaments and the periods of the year where I can do best. “It's hard to compare.”
A look at his two great rivals in their best exercises. Nadal won Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010, a total of seven titles, and finished No. 1. He did not win the Masters Cup or the Davis Cup. Federer was one match away from winning the four majors in 2006 and 2007, years in which he won the Masters Cup and finished at number 1, and he also won the big three in 2004, also finishing at the top of the ranking.