Novak Djokovic was proclaimed champion of his fourth US Open just a few hours ago. Just as after his triumph at the Philippe Chatrier, today we could reflect on the numbers and realities surrounding this feat… but Nole, faithful to his values and way of understanding life, channeled the story in a direction different.
After each Grand Slam, at Puntodebreak it is already a tradition to make a article that honors the champion of the event. Not in vain, as has happened in this US Open 2023, 128 players fight for the copper in the most arduous and physical test that a tennis player can experience, looking for a small crack through which to enter the tennis Olympus. Every great tournament hides impressive matches, revelations, disappointments, epic battles and curious notes that shape the destiny of all its participants… but only one of them, in an annual reminder of the cruelty and rawness of tennis, is proclaimed champion. In recent times, of course, we have written many articles of this type about a certain Novak Djokovic. Nobody earns more than him. Nobody subdues his rivals as much as he does. No one has looked his destiny in the eye with as much fierceness and determination as he has…and, of course, there comes a time when We are running out of qualifiers.
Nor has there been any player in the history of this sport who has had to make so much effort to find worthy recognition from the people. Labels set by currents from past eras that alluded to Djokovic’s behaviors as a kind of perennial cross that detracts from any success or feat that the Serbian signs. Comparisons of rankings, times and eras that resurface with force to remove the value deserved by the masterpieces of a guy determined to remind us, month after month, that playing tennis in this way at 36 years of age is a Martian madness that we have rarely seen in the history of this sport. Perhaps all this counterweight with which Nole works has helped to reinforce, at the same time, a narrative used to make his figure be missed, an attempt to make his candidacy for the tennis Olympus less unworthy.
“Djokovic tries too hard.” “He is obsessed with records”. “He will never be the most loved or the best, no matter how hard he tries.” It is a phrase that I am sure you have heard at some time, a kind of dogma that, unfortunately for its many detractors, has only strengthen the mentality iron from Belgrade. These arguments hide, I would dare say, a relatively classist background. Effort as a variant not important enough to achieve glory, ambition as an indicator of a less pure character than that of others who, almost without effort, earned their place. It is difficult to reach a circuit in which beauty and struggle merge in such a perfect and antinomian rivalry, I understand it. Overturning the perceptions of the perfection of his two contenders, then, is a dare which entails as punishment the non-acceptance of those who move masses and currents. I understand.
NOTHING TO PROVE
But Djokovic is a stubborn guy. Or true to their values, of course. He is obsessed. Or he loves this sport too much to not continue giving it joy, of course. I imagine that each person will decide how to view the situation. Yesterday I found a very illustrative video about the image that Novak Djokovic has in his country, a country destroyed by the bombs of war, vilified to the extreme by partisan sides that go beyond sport and on which a unfair stigma that anyone who decides to visit it will eliminate the moment they meet its people. Was the Serbian football team, having just landed after playing a friendly match, upon finding out that Novak had just won #24. The plane was a party, the chants of ‘Nole, Nole’ in unison. There is no one who has united them so much and has given them so much light in recent times.
When Djokovic won the 24th Grand Slam, his search focused on a specific person. He received his first hug, wink, gesture of complicity. his daughter, Tara. There were no gestures of grandiloquence, signs of arrogance or ego, which would have been appropriate according to those who have been seeing unfounded stories for years and years. Only joy, love and innocence. Djokovic plays tennis with time on his side: even though he is 36 years old, he no longer has anything to prove to anyone. His tennis has broken down the limitations that many placed on him: His person, for those who want to peel back the layers and noise, has destroyed the projections and narratives that existed around him.
And he, of course, has understood it. That’s why he plays free and that’s why he spends his time fighting to improve the sport he loves. I suppose, of course, that constitutes a crime for many incapable of recognizing his greatness. Djokovic leads, day after day, the fight of those who were not born touched by a wand, of those who They overcame the adversities of life and the roofs that others put on them, of which they must demonstrate more than others what stuff they are made of. When they tell you that your ambition and your values are not enough, remember then that the guy who forged his character among bombs ended up destroying each and every one of the myths that hovered over his person to become, without palliatives, the greatest tennis player. great in history. And he did it with a smile, without forgetting those who were at his side and without giving up his personal convictions. There you will understand that everything is possible.
2023-09-11 21:43:02
#Novak #Djokovics #true #obsession
