CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/GETTY16 1GS Saturday May 28 2022 | the timesSport
That was in the US Open final in
September. Defeat by Daniil
Medvedev and the stripping from him
of his great ambition to complete the
calendar grand slam — it seemed like
a kind of torture. He wept in public,
and that turned out to be the very
moment of the melting.
His comment afterwards told a
story. He may have lost the final, he
said, yet he was “the happiest man
alive” because of the love that he felt
from the crowd.
If he arrived then at a place he had
always sought — a kind of universal
admiration — then he exited it
almost immediately.
New York was followed by
Melbourne, and that experience inMelbourne made him the most
notorious anti-vaxxer on the planet.
So here we are in Paris, which is
essentially the world No 1’s return to
grand-slam tennis. Yesterday, he had
Arsène Wenger and Clarence Seedorf
in the stand, front and second row,
right above one service end. He
described that as “an honour”.
He also said, afterwards, that he
would definitely return to play the
Australian Open next year if he was
allowed back to Melbourne. “I would
love to go back,” he said. “I don’t hold
any grudges.” And so he goes on.
Unperturbed.
No, he certainly isn’t the toast of
Roland Garros, but he isn’t quite the
black sheep either. People boo; peoplecheer. They did that before
Melbourne too. Given the global
controversy he caused back then, it
would not have been surprising had
his reception here not been a whole
lot worse.
The intrigue, then, is how
Wimbledon will behave. Perhaps with
its nice, restrained manners, never
quite letting its heart settle on one of
its greatest multiple champions? And
probably never quite giving full vent,
either, to the broad anger felt at his
position on Covid?
At a guess, that is the purgatory in
which Djokovic’s career is likely to
remain — however many titles he
accumulates, and however great his
mastery of the court.Djokovic in
purgatory: a
master, but
still unloved
Owen Slot
Chief Sports Writer
N
ovak Djokovic hits the
underside of his shoes
with his racket between
points to knock off the
residual clay dust. At
times yesterday, it seemed as though
he was slapping them to keep himself
alert.
The crowd needed a nudge too.
They were pleading with the flaky
opposition, Aljaz Bedene of Slovenia,
to lift his game. At least give us
something to cheer. The high point of
the affair — really, you couldn’t call it
a contest — was a delicacy: Bedene’s
drop shot to stay alive in the first
game of the second set. Cue rapturous
cheers for our man’s survival.
There have been three kinds of
support here in Paris this week at
Djokovic’s games. There was this kind
of lame hope, yesterday, that Bedene
may at least flex a muscle. There was
Wednesday, in the game against Alex
Molcan of Slovakia, who put up a
semblance of a battle. Lost in straight
sets, yes, but at least he got stuck in,
and the crowd were cheering him on
uproariously.
And then there was Monday,
against Yoshihito Nishioka, of Japan.
It was a night game and presumably
some of the crowd had been in the
bar. Either way, everyone was a huge
“Yoshi” fan. They reserved the
pantomime booing for Djokovic. His
aggressive fist-pump after big points
was like a lightning conductor. He
pumps, they boo.
The predicament of a Djokovic
opponent in these knockout rounds is
miserable. Bedene, yesterday, fell
deepest in the mire; you know you
can’t beat Djokovic with your regular
game, so you take chances you
wouldn’t normally take and go for the
lines. And if you are Bedene and you
are probably slightly intimidated too,
you keep swinging and missing and
you are suddenly handing Djokovic
the match.
Bedene failed to win a point in
three of the Serb’s four second-set
service games, When Djokovic
defended the only break point he
faced all match, his reward from the
stands was a sprinkling of booing.
What these crowds are actually
being treated to is a masterclass. Not
for a moment is Djokovic allowing his
standards to slip. His range of shots,
their accuracy and his athleticism are
as good as this game has known. No,
it isn’t the balletic elegance of Roger
Federer, not the blatant awesomeness
of their multiple champion, RafaelNadal. That, of course, has always
been the Djokovic impasse. Yet
Roland Garros, which is presumably
full of tennis lovers, still does not
willingly love one of the sport’s
greatest players.
He did get the fans onside at the
end. He performed the familiar
gesturing post-match, pointing to the
skies, his heart and then all four sides
of the crowd, as if he is sharing
celestial love. No, the crowd aren’t
impervious to this. They chuckled
along on Wednesday when he was a
bit jokey-flirty in his on-court
interview with Marion Bartoli
afterwards, telling her that he has
missed her and that it’s OK for him to
say that because he knows her
husband is in the crowd.
These good vibes survived through
to his press conference, where he said
that “the crowd and this energy of
people coming to watch me play is
one of the biggest reasons why I keep
on competing”. Like he hasn’t been
listening.
I know what you’re thinking: how
can I get this far into a Djokovic
column without mentioning Covid,
his anti-vaccination stance and the
whole charade in Melbourne at the
start of the year, when he was barred
from competing at the Australian
Open. Yet it was this way with
Djokovic before the pandemic too.
The French crowd are more raucous
than at Wimbledon. In SW19, they
tend to express antipathy by
supporting the opposition. In the epic
Wimbledon final against Federer in
2019, Djokovic’s reception could
hardly have been frostier.
Djoko-fans — and yes, we know
you’re out there — are presumably
charmed by him when he shares the
post-match love.
Yet even this became the subject of
mockery last year, when Nick Kyrgios
imitated it at the Australian Open,
during the time of Covid, when the
stands were empty.
Why Djokovic has never quite
connected may say as much about
humankind as it does about him.
Wimbledon certainly didn’t fall
instantly in love with Martina
Navratilova. Or Ivan Lendl.
The ice, however, started to melt
for those players when they had
properly established themselves,
certainly when their careers crept
towards an end and their best days
appeared to be behind them. When
Djokovic experienced a glimmer of
this last year, he loved it.Three years ago, on these
pages, we took a change of
pace and asked our writers
to name their favourite
places to watch sport in the
United Kingdom. Personally,
though I find it hard to top
Centre Court, my own
quirky addition was the
Richardson Evans Memorial
Ground, where they play the
Rosslyn Park school sevens,
though I wish I’d added to
the list the Lynton cricket
ground in the Valley of the
Rocks in north Devon. I am
still hankering after a trip
to one of the
recommendations, Cartmel
Racecourse, at the foot of
the Lake District.
Here at Roland Garros is
another for your collection
(yes, yes, not UK, but that’snot the point), the nearly-
new Simonne Mathieu
Court. From outside the
grounds, it looks like
another of the historic
greenhouses of the nearby
Serres d’Auteuil gardens —
which it kind of is.
The court was built to
blend, so the clay surface is
sunken 14 rows of seats
below ground level. Fromthe ground level, what you
see are four vast
greenhouses, one at each
side of the court, each of
them dedicated to a
different continent. There
are shrubs in the African
end that are blossoming
beautiful yellow flowers; in
Oceania, there is a
macrozamia that is 120
years old.Simonne Mathieu won
two French Open titles in
1938 and 1939 and, since
2019, her name has been
regally preserved in this
5,000-seater hole in the
ground. Quite a lot of
Roland Garros is concrete,
but to get to Simonne
Mathieu, you can walk
through a lovely orangerie
before the greenhouses
appear in front of you.
Inside is warm, intimate
and unique — and the
greenhouses certainly keep
the volume in. You’ve not
heard anything louder this
week than Carlos Alcaraz
serving out with an ace,
here, to close out a five-set
win over Albert Ramos-
Vinolas, with magnificent
foliage all about him.Smashes among the shrubbery – a new sporting arena to savour
Djokovic has
sailed through
the first week
in Paris, but
the crowds
have hardly
warmed to himSimonne Mathieu Court is nestled among the greenery*