PARIS — There they go once more.
For the second time in three weeks, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz will do battle for one of many greatest prizes in tennis.
After they meet within the Paris 2024 Olympics gold medal match at Roland Garros, on Sunday round 1 p.m. UK / 8 a.m. ET, they may open the most recent chapter of their inter-generational duel.
The person atop the all-time tennis heap; the younger buck ruling the present one.
Logic holds that there isn’t a lot time left for these types of battles, particularly not on the Olympics. Djokovic is 37. As ageless as he can appear, it’s laborious to see a gold-medal duel with Alcaraz occurring in Los Angeles in 4 years’ time, although don’t put it previous him.
Alcaraz, 21, seemingly has a decade or extra of supremacy forward of him, able to be constructed on prime of his domination of males’s tennis this spring and summer season.
Alcaraz and Djokovic’s final assembly was the 2024 Wimbledon last (Julian Finney/Getty Pictures)
On Sunday they may do one thing that’s turning into more and more uncommon, even within the quick time they’ve been going through one another on the prime of the game. They are going to play for a prize that neither of them has — and it isn’t a title at some random tour cease the place each of them occur to be.
For Djokovic, the gold medal is the uncommon tennis bauble that he one way or the other doesn’t have. It’s all that’s lacking from a mantle crowded with 24 Grand Slam titles, and a lonely bronze in singles from 2008 is all he has to indicate for his 4 earlier appearances within the Olympic match.
He’s performed skilled tennis for 20 years. He’s performed in 49 Grand Slam semifinals and received 37 of them. Till Friday night towards Lorenzo Musetti of Italy, he’d by no means received one on the Olympics. When he did, with a final, blasted forehand down the road, he collapsed on his again within the crimson clay.
He clutched his fists and fought to carry again his tears however misplaced that one, because the Serbian flags waved and the group chanted: “NOVAK, NOVAK!”
There isn’t a technique to overstate how a lot this match means to him, particularly provided that it regarded like a pipe dream two months in the past when he tore his meniscus on this identical court docket and needed to bear an operation and a high-speed rehabilitation that each risked and saved his summer season.
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For Alcaraz, it’s the subsequent piece of {hardware} accumulation that can enable him to, as he put it final month at Wimbledon, “sit at that desk” with Djokovic and the remainder of the all-time greats. He has an opportunity to turn into one in every of three gamers to win the French Open, Wimbledon and the Olympic match in the identical yr. Rafael Nadal and Steffi Graf are the others.
“Two legends from sport,” Alcaraz stated. “I’ll attempt not to think about each stat, the issues I may obtain.”
On Friday he performed as if he already has a spot setting at that desk — or perhaps even owned it — blowing via Felix Auger Aliassime 6-1, 6-1 with a daunting ferocity that he has lately acquired, particularly within the latter phases of tournaments.
In brilliant sunshine and swelteringly humid air at Roland Garros on Friday, each units adopted a sample to a tee, as if Alcaraz had scripted them. Lose a sport whereas returning; win a sport on serve. Within the second set, the opposite approach spherical. Then, spend 5 video games pulling Auger-Aliassime all concerning the court docket, discombobulating his sport plan till he’s throwing in new concepts like he has to do, however not having any of them work, getting increasingly confused till he seems throughout the web and it’s 1-5 and it’s over.
Alcaraz has pushed his stage greater and better all through the match (Daniel Kopatsch/Getty Pictures)
He principally did this identical factor to Auger-Aliassime, a deceptively glorious clay court docket participant, on this identical court docket again within the fourth spherical of the French Open in June. Auger-Aliassime is simply 23, just a few years faraway from being thought-about destined for large titles.
Now he’s years of afternoons like Friday coming at him. No enjoyable.
“I knew I needed to begin the match effectively, actually specializing in each level, attempting to play with quite a lot of depth,” Alcaraz stated. “I didn’t assume it was going to be like that.”
Djokovic performed a distinct form of all-time nice tennis. He survived an more and more harmful opponent, one evening after a couple of dangerous steps had him questioning if he’d finished his knee once more throughout his quarterfinal win over Stefanos Tsitsipas. “Very frightened,” he had stated, after struggling sharp ache that solely subsided with the assistance of painkillers throughout that match.
He had the knee examined Friday however appeared to transferring with out hindrance for many of the evening. On Thursday, he stated he was going to “ pray to God for every little thing to be OK.” These prayers had been seemingly answered.
Djokovic and Musetti, who performed within the semifinals at Wimbledon final month, performed full-gas, big-boy tennis for many of two hours. Djokovic’s chest heaved after factors, simply because it did final time they met on this court docket, after they contested the most recent end in French Open historical past.
He needed to take additional time to catch his breath and received a warning and a first-serve penalty for it, after which a code violation warning after an alternate with the chair umpire, Jaume Campistol.
Djokovic and Campistol throughout their showdown (Clive Brunskill/Getty Pictures)
This was what stressed Djokovic seems like — the Djokovic who desires one thing desperately, one thing uncommon and unfamiliar, and desires it badly sufficient that his nerves start to sap his vitality. He yelled at his Serbian coaches and teammates repeatedly, imploring them to make extra noise and provides him the enhance he wanted.
Musetti matched him shot for shot till the ultimate factors of the primary set, he hit a simple putaway proper again and Djokovic, who paddled it again and one way or the other received the purpose. A sloppy drop shot from Musetti gave Djokovic the lead he so not often relinquishes, and he didn’t begin to take action Friday, profitable 6-2 regardless of shedding his serve twice within the second set. His head-to-head towards Musetti, who at all times appears to check Djokovic, is now at 7-1.
That ascent to the highest of the all-time tennis heap has gathered quite a lot of scar tissue, making a technology of gamers who, the place Djokovic perceives a series of victories, they see one single disaster, which retains piling wreckage and hurls it in entrance of their toes. No extra was this in proof than towards Tsitsipas, who led an ailing Djokovic 4-0 after which 5-3, 40-0 of their second set, earlier than withdrawing into himself and withering.
Djokovic is aware of that what’s coming subsequent is his personal current disaster, a check towards the participant who served him a chastening reminder of actuality on the All England Membership simply weeks in the past. Nonetheless, the Serbian is ready to discuss with Alcaraz as a part of “the subsequent, subsequent, subsequent, technology”, his half-sneering shorthand for what number of have come earlier than solely to have him swat them away. He is aware of Alcaraz (as effectively Italian Jannik Sinner, who skipped the Olympics with tonsilitis) are totally different, enjoying at a stage he has not been capable of attain all yr.
He is aware of he’s going to wish to get there, one way or the other, and he is aware of that he must persuade himself that it’s doable, simply as he as soon as satisfied himself he may overtake Nadal and Roger Federer.
It’s the one technique to get nearly the one factor he doesn’t have.
Further reporting by James Hansen
(Daniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Pictures/Getty Pictures)