| Cover story: March 2008 |
In a Shocking Aussie Open,
Djokovic Dethroned Royal Roger
and Princess Maria Again Ascended to the Throne
MELBOURNE — It was hardly shocking. The usual wannabes in men’s tennis — Roddick, Blake, Hewitt — all fell by the wayside.
What was shocking was that charismatic Muhammad Ali look-alike Jo-Wilfried Tsonga brought down a hearty string of players — Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet, Nikolay Davydenko — and then the mighty bull, Rafael Nadal, to stun the tennis universe as he reached the final.
Equally shocking was that Mr. Perfect, Roger Federer, looked kind of ordinary, struggling big time in the third round against the fearless but moderately ranked Serb Janko Tipsarevic and then, in the semis, looked flat and insecure against another Serb, the supremely confident Novak Djokovic, who went on to win his first Slam.
For a few moments, the whole tournament simply stopped. Tennis just wondered.
For the first time in three years, there was no Fed or Rafa in a final. For the first time in 11 Slams, the final was Fed-less and the seemingly unending discussion about how quickly Roger would Fed-Ex himself past Sampras in the record books was thrown off its presumably certain tracks.
Tennis-dom left Australia spinning with questions. Was Tsonga’s meteoric rise just the first of many great runs from the beguiling French basher, or just a flash in the pan from an erratic, injury-riddled youngster who has yet to win a title of any kind? Was Fed’s loss just a bothersome bump in the road, or a sign that Djokovic and the rest of the kids are ready to rid the world of Federer-esque domination? Will Nadal ever learn to hit through the court, develop a threatening first serve and win a fast-court Slam?
Plus, someone clearly forgot to tell 20-year-old Djokovic that he was supposed to wait a little longer before he busted through the roof. In a clear statement that he’s ready to rumble with the world’s elite, the strong and sturdy all-courter pummeled Tsonga 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-7 (2) in the final.
Djokovic’s camp sent out notice that Federer better beware. “As you say, the king is dead. Long live the king,” Djokovic’s smiling mother, Dijana, told IT.
While that coronation is way too premature, Djokovic did display an amazing brand of solid, inventive tennis that signaled he’s here to stay. It’s nearly impossible to find a weakness in his game, and while he doesn’t sport the most colorful style, he is relentless, sound in every area, and for the first time at a major, showed that he was willing to hit out when necessary.
Last year, in the U.S. Open final against champion Federer, he failed to take care of seven set points. Against Fed in the semis and against Tsonga in the final, when it was time for him to shut the door, he slammed it shut.
“I knew he could do it,” Dijana said. “He was so mentally strong. At the U.S. Open he was playing the king, he was only 20 [and] in front of 23,000 people. He was shaky and didn’t take the many opportunities. But when that was over, my husband told him, you’ll never lose to Federer again if you get more mature.”
Djokovic needed that maturity in the final set against Tsonga, who came out roaring, leaping all over the court, bombing in 130-mph flat serves, taking huge cuts at forehands and hammering overheads. He yelled, fist-pumped and had the sold-out crowd standing and screaming. When he won the first set with a topspin lob, he unleashed a windmill fist pump and the arena literally exploded in “Jo-Jo-Jo” chants.
But Djokovic promptly borrowed a little of Ali’s strategy against George Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle and went into a rope-a-dope routine, keeping his arms up to protect himself from knockout blows and countering with flurries whenever his foe let his guard down. Tsonga threw haymakers, but Djokovic kept moving and sticking and finally landed too many thunderous body blows.
After the win, Djokovic knelt down, kissed the deep-blue court, knowing he had won his first major. For a kid from war-torn Serbia, it was an incredible achievement.
“For somebody else it was not realistic because Serbia doesn’t have such a big tennis tradition,” Djokovic said. “Considering all these bad times we had, it was basically impossible if you look at it that way, but I always believed.”
While the third-ranked Djokovic’s run was incredibly impressive, it’s difficult to tell whether he will be able to back his run week in, week out. He’s still young and has been prone to getting worn down. But while Vajda wouldn’t predict a year-end No. 1 ranking, he said it’s clear that Djokovic is ready to stand up to Fed and Nadal. “He’s the one,” Vajda said.
But Dijana was ready to take it a step further, saying that her son is prepared to take over the tour. Novak is the apple of her eye and for the rest of the tour, she believes he’s the forbidden fruit. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” Dijana said. “This is the first of many Grand Slams. You need to remember that. Write it down.”
*****
Just an hour after she taught Ana Ivanovic the meaning of how to compose oneself during a Grand Slam final and sashayed away with the a 7-5, 6-3 victory in the Aussie Open final, Maria Sharapova couldn’t help think back to ‘07, when a sore shoulder translated into often horrific play and she felt emotionally spent.
The ‘07 Sharapova won only one title and was scorched in her Slam losses. The ‘08 version was the one with the flamethrower and she jetted away with her third Slam title tucked firmly in her pocket. “It kept rolling and rolling, and you think good things were going to happen, but no good things were happening,” Sharapova said of her ‘07 campaign. “There were so many setbacks and I was left in so many tough situations. You have to appreciate every moment, which is why this one is so much sweeter. When I was going through all those setbacks, I tried to remember what it was like to hold those Wimbledon and U.S. Open trophies and know that I was capable of doing it again.”
Sharapova’s coach, Michael Joyce, said of his 20-year-old student, “Sometimes those downs actually help you to shoot back up. And a young girl like her hasn’t been through a lot of ups and downs. It’s been mostly up, up, up. But I kept telling her, ‘It’s going to make you stronger.’”
It was a remarkable four-month turnaround from when she looked vulnerable in her shocking loss to Pole Agnieszka Radwanska at the U.S. Open and looked impenetrable in her win over Ivanovic. In one of the most impressive displays ever at a hard-court major, Sharapova lost only 32 games without dropping a set in seven matches, trouncing the likes of three-time Slam champ Lindsay Davenport, two-time Slam finalist Elena Dementieva, top-ranked Justine Henin, No. 3 Jelena Jankovic and No. 4 Ivanovic.
Sharapova learned a lot in ‘07, not just about what she needed to do to improve her overall game when her serve wavered, but how to handle personal loss. She had grown very close to Joyce’s mother, Jane, who died last spring after a long battle with cancer.
“We just kept talking about it and saying there’s so much more to life than tennis matches,” Joyce said. “For a young girl at her age when you go through something like that, it puts things in perspective. So maybe my mom was helping her from up above.”
While Sharapova was in cruise control on court, it wasn’t that easy off it. After Sharapova crushed top-ranked Henin 6-4, 6-0 in the quarters, her intense father was caught on camera giving a throat-slitting gesture while dressed in a fatigue hoodie.
Yuri Sharapov was roundly criticized even though the gesture was supposed to have been an inside joke between daddy and daughter, who had taken to telling him that he looked like an assassin in the pullover.
“It was a tough night,” said Joyce, “She’s used to that. I think she read one morning that some seal was born to her grunts.”
While Yuri has a tough exterior, he sees himself as a regular guy even though he hardly interacts with anyone. After her victory, Yuri walked by an IT reporter and, slapping his chest, said, “See, I’m a great guy, a great guy. I have a lot of heart. Why were you talking about the hood?”
Maria says that they have an equitable enough relationship that she can go up to him and tell him to put a lid on it. “Even when I was a kid I did that,” she said. “That’s never stopped me before. He knows me very well. Some things never change.”
Like the great champs before her, Sharapova has few problems putting her off-court distractions behind her. “It’s my escape from the talk,” she said. “Everything else is just gone.”
While the final was lacking in quality, that can’t be blamed on Sharapova, who did what she needed to win. She served very well, with terrific placement, winning early on her service points and rarely allowing Ivanovic to jump on her second serve.
For as hard as she competed, Ivanovic never found her ferocious forehand, and without it she had to go to a hazy Plan B, where she came into net on mediocre approaches and was frequently passed. About 15 minutes before the tall blonde literally skipped happily down the hallway to celebrate, the tall brunette, who was a beloved crowd favorite, had walked gingerly down the same corridor, still weeping quietly. Ivanovic will certainly have more chances, but on court, she pursed her lips, yelled in anguish at her Friend’s Box and cried through her runner-up speech. “Yes, it hurts,” she confided.
Sharapova has won three Slams, passing Amelie Mauresmo and tying Davenport. She’s three behind Venus, four behind Henin and five behind Serena, but has a good chance to catch them all. After all, she’s only 20.
But she feels much older, because since winning Wimbledon as a 17-year-old, she’s been expected to win one big title after another, even though her game was still maturing. Moreover, she’s become her own cottage/mansion industry and is now pocketing an estimated $30 million a year, by far the most of any female athlete on the planet. But she’s earned her place in history and don’t dare tell her otherwise. “When I’m driving in my Range Rover and I get dirty looks and it’s [like] they are saying, ‘That spoiled brat, her father probably bought her Range Rover.’ And I’m like, ‘No, honey, I bought that for myself.’ I know that I worked for mine.”
