Minutes after winning his sixth Wimbledon and matching the 20 greats of
Federer
and
Nadal
,
Novak Djokovic
slipped in a press conference that he had not yet decided if he would participate in the Tokyo Games. The absence of an audience, the restrictions in the Olympic Village and the impossibility of including his striker in the team were some reasons that invited him to doubt. Ultimately, the temptation to pursue the
Golden Slam outweighed
, something that only
Steffi Graf
has achieved in tennis. After winning in Australia, Paris and London, he could complete the perfect season, not just join
Donald Budge
and
Rod Laver.
, the only two players capable of winning the four
majors
in the same season, but also hanging the Olympic gold. The ambitious challenge included the 21st major, detaching himself from the two tennis players with whom he has dominated the circuit.
The defeats against
Alexander Zverev
in the semifinals and later against
Pablo Carreño
in the fight for the bronze, tinged by very little edifying attitudes on the court, left him in a bad place, as if in the three weeks between his sixth crown at All England Club and the Olympic hit would have lost much of the impregnable aura that it could boast after dethroning even Nadal in his Parisian fiefdom.
He had made a serious physical and emotional investment, he had crossed half the world, exposed to extreme humidity conditions, to return not only without the gold, which was the only objective, but also dismounted from the drawer, with a bruised image and some doubts.
The glare of the spotlights
It was, yes, the most important. Although both conquests, taking the 21st Grand Slam and squaring all four in the same course, went hand in hand, the possibility of succeeding Laver, 52 years after the Australian completed his second Grand Slam, accentuated the glare of the spotlights on his figure. Laver had arrived in New York on Thursday with a mission to deliver the cup to his heir. After the defeat, who awarded Medvedev was
Stan Smith
, champion of the tournament in 1971. The fight to finish with the largest number of greats continues and
Nole
is the best placed to win it, but it will be very difficult to get back on the train of history to accompany Laver and Budge.
The fact that he dropped at least one set in five of the six games leading up to the US Open final denoted his state of anxiety. Tennis did not flow as usual. Medvedev, world number two, an accomplished hardcourt specialist, raised the bar in a final where the Serb never was. Unlike at Roland Garros, when he went to the locker room after losing the first two sets to
Tsitsipas
, this time he did not stop the match. He gave the impression that he wanted to disappear as soon as possible, to get rid of an unbearable weight.
After the penultimate game of the match, he broke down in tears in his chair.
Accustomed to having the stands on his back, he had also found the massive support of the
Arthur Ashe public
, eager to witness the greatest event in tennis history.
Suddenly, the player given to the provocation, jealous of the affection that tennis players like Nadal and Djokovic receive, the implacable competitor, descended to the cement and showed an unprecedented aspect, as he would do again in the awards ceremony and in the wheel of press.
He had failed in the most important game of his life, but this time he was leaving with the public in his pocket.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
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