Wimbledon, England
He’s hurting, Novak Djokovic, more than anyone realized. His right elbow has given him occasional pain for a year and a half, he said. He can’t seem to fix it permanently, and cannot quite know when the pain is going to flare up. But once it does, he doesn’t play the way he wants to play, if he can play at all.
On Wednesday Djokovic went down weakly to Tomas Berdych, 7-6(2), 2-0 before he quit. It was a bitter defeat in a tournament that had started with such positive energy. In his first four matches he didn’t lose a set. At the end of his fourth match, though, he showed signs that his right arm had started to struggle. By the time he got to Berdych, he couldn’t carry on.
“All the treatments,” he said, “couldn’t really help. The serve and forehand were the shots where I could feel it the most. Just after that there was really no sense.”
Djokovic felt sleighted. His fourth round match was delayed because Rafael Nadal’s five-set defeat lasted nearly five hours. Djokovic wanted to move his match from No. 1 Court to Centre Court so they could compete that evening, but to no avail. He played the next day and won in three sets, but by the time Wednesday came, his elbow wasn’t right. He had two and a half hours of massage before the match but could not make it to the finish line.
“I haven’t felt this much pain ever since I’ve had this injury,” Djokovic said. “So it’s not a good sign. Obviously schedule will be readjusted. We’ll see. I mean, I’m not thinking too much ahead because I’m not able, not able to play.”
Tennis can be especially cruel in a moment’s notice. Perhaps you remember Robin Soderling, who beat Nadal at the 2009 French Open? The man hit with force and had no fear. He could have gotten even better or more successful, but then he suffered from glandular fever for four years and eventually retired.
Djokovic’s condition seems treatable, but also tricky. Surgery could set him back months; as he is now, he might well have to skip the U.S. Open in late August.
“Obviously it’s adding up more and more,” he said. “The more I play, the worse it gets. Yeah, I guess the break is something that I will have to consider right now.”
To summarize: That’s miserable. You have to feel for Djokovic at the moment. He needed two winless Slam years—in 2009 and 2010—to understand how to compete with Roger Federer and Nadal, who ruled the sport. Once he did, he dominated until this time last year, when he began to sink. Mental exhaustion is one thing, but an injury like this is quite another. He’s worked as hard as anyone in men’s tennis, and it may have cost him.
“Professional tennis is getting very physical in the last couple of years,” Djokovic said. “It’s not easy to kind of play on the highest level throughout the entire season, then be able to do that over and over again every season, and then stay healthy.”
No, it isn’t. But as Federer and Nadal have shown, it can be done again with patience, work and some luck. That’s all Djokovic can hope for now.
