Djokovic fired up

Novak Djokovic was irritated again.

He had the lost the second set to Kei Nishikori in their quarter-final on Centre Court, and he was down break points at 2-2 in the third set. He had been given a warning by chair umpire Carlos Ramos for unsportsmanlike conduct after bouncing his racket on the grass; half-an-hour later he was still muttering about it. Djokovic was broken in the third set when he tried, and missed, a strangely ill-considered and impatient crosscourt drop shot. If a shot can be said to look “annoyed,” it was that one.

As the third set began, Nishikori was reading Djokovic’s ground strokes, taking the ball early, and taking control of the rallies. The match had begun to resemble the 2014 US Open semi-final between the pair, which also happened to be the last time that Nishikori had beaten him.

Was Djokovic, after seeming to turn a corner in his last two matches here, about to reverse back around one? That’s how his season had gone up to this point - one small step forward, one big step back to square one. After losing in the quarter-finals at Roland-Garros, he was asked if he was “back.” "Yeah", Djokovic said with a shake of his head, “back in the locker room.” 

This time, though, Djokovic did something different. He extricated himself from those break points at 2-2 and made it back to deuce. On the next point, he approached the net, and punched a backhand volley that landed just inside the sideline for a winner. There was something about that volley - how cleanly and confidently it was struck - that felt different. It looked, I thought at the time, like a Novak Djokovic shot.

Turnaround

Whatever we want to call it, Djokovic’s subsequent service hold was the start of a match-changing turnaround. He would lose just two more games, and win the final two sets going away, 6-2, 6-2. Instead of letting the errors and setbacks and chair-umpire decisions prey on his mind, Djokovic channelled his frustration. At one stage, he saw Nishikori bounce his own racket on the turf. When Ramos failed to announce a warning Djokovic complained and accused him of “double standards”. Then he came right back and fired off a forehand winner to hold serve. Djokovic finally had something to fight against, other than his own past brilliance, and his own expectations for himself.

Speaking of Djokovic’s past, there’s a word that’s often used to describe his play when he was at his best: clinical. In his late-20s prime, he was thought to be a ground-stroking machine with no weaknesses. And Djokovic did have days when he was unplayably perfect. But he had many more days when he wasn’t. He had many more days when he railed at himself and rolled his eyes, barked at his player box, tossed his racket around, fell behind early, played long, messy, back-and-forth sets, missed down-the-line backhands that he would normally make in his sleep, and rescued himself back from the brink of defeat. And yet, despite all of that, he dominated: he won 12 majors and spent 223 weeks at No.1.

Far from winning like a machine, or with perfect play, Djokovic won with emotion and determination - like all champs, he won beautifully, and he won ugly. So far at Wimbledon, he’s been winning with that same emotion. Against Kyle Edmund, he raged against the Wimbledon crowd who were rooting against him, the same way he did in the 2015 final, when he beat Roger Federer in front of a similarly partisan audience on the same court. Against Nishikori, Djokovic won by raging against the injustice of the chair umpire and manufactured a sense of aggression and momentum where there didn’t appear to be one.

Even as he was missing some makeable shots against Nishikori, Djokovic willed himself forward and fired himself up, loudly, after virtually every point. Now he’s in a Grand Slam semi-final for the first time since 2016. And he’s there not because the clinical version of Djokovic is back, but because the wilful, winning one has returned.