Novak Djokovic is halfway to a calendar-year Grand Slam, winning all four majors in one season. He won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon and made it all the way to the title match at the U.S. Open before losing to Daniil Medvedev. He will resume that pursuit at Wimbledon on July 3. Djokovic was deported from Australia in January 2021 before the Australian Open and was not allowed to fly to the United States ahead of last year's U.S.
Open. Getting to 23 not only sets the mark for men, but it also lets him equal Serena Williams, who wrapped up her career last year, for the most by anyone in the Open era, which began in 1968. Margaret Court won some of her all-time record of 24 Slam trophies in the amateur era. Novak Djokovic is the oldest singles champion at Roland Garros, and has been sidelined since January by a hip injury and had arthroscopic surgery on June 2. On Sunday, he won the men's singles final match of the French Open tennis tournament against Norway's Casper Ruud in three sets, 7-6, (7-1), 6-3, 7-5, at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris.
Djokovic has spent more weeks at the top spot than any player — man or woman — since the inception of computerized tennis rankings a half-century ago. In the semifinals, Djokovic eliminated Alcaraz in the semifinals, wearing him down over two thrilling sets until the 20-year-old Spaniard's body cramped up badly. Alcaraz continued to play, but the scores of the last two sets of the four-set match told the story: 6-1, 6-1. This was the third Slam final in the past five events for Ruud, a 24-year-old from Norway, but he is now 0-3. As Djokovic reeled off 12 of the last 13 points to end things, dropping onto his back with limbs spread wide at the finish, the shouts of his name were thunderous.
Djokovic and Ruud went to a tiebreaker in Paris, where Djokovic and Ruud had to fight for four sets. In the first set, Djokovic missed a shot and then made a different sort of mistake, shanking an overhead from near the net way beyond the opposite baseline to get broken and trail 2-0. After Ruud led 4-1, Djokovic accumulated 13 unforced errors, while Djokovic made just four. Then, after finishing the first set with 18 unforced errors, Djokovic recalibrated himself, with merely 14 over the last two sets combined. Then it was Ruud's turn to flub an overhead, rocking back and depositing his into the net to end a 29-stroke point.
Djokovic's first service break made it 4-3, and he shook his right fist. In the second set, Djokovic contributed four winners and zero unforced errors, making his career mark in tiebreakers 308-162, a winning percentage of.655. In 2023, he's 15-4, including 6-0 in Paris, and his sum total of unforced errors was zero. The set alone lasted 1 hour, 21 minutes, chock full of extended exchanges, the sort of points about which entire stories could be written. Djokovic's scrambling and stretching and bending and twisting on defense shows up on the scoreboard, but all of the long points also sap a foe's energy and will. He complained to chair umpire Damien Dumusois about how much time was being allotted for changeovers and occasionally beyond that, so much so that one voice from the seats exclaimed, "Serve it!" And Dumusois warned him for the time-taking in the third set.
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