Is Novak Djokovic’s first tennis season in seven years without a Grand Slam title a sign?

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NEW YORK — It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Twenty-six days after Novak Djokovic won Olympic gold in Paris, he capped his second-least profitable Grand Slam season since 2009 with a stunning third-round defeat to Alexei Popyrin at the US Open. With just a few months to go on the 2024 tennis calendar, he could end the year without a Tour-level title for the first time since 2005, while securing what he describes as the “greatest achievement of his career.”

When has it ever been a case of either/or for Djokovic? The 24-time major winner is usually only satisfied when he wins everything. Settling for less is generally anathema to the man who has dominated tennis since early 2011, with a few hiccups.

As is often the case in this sport, father time is undefeated. At the age of 37, perhaps the moment that was always going to come has finally arrived. No steep decline, nor an end to his relevance at Grand Slam tournaments. It’s just that he’s become a player who can still reach the top every now and then, but not all the time and not all season long.

Players who have beaten him include Alejandro Tabilo, Tomas Machac, Luca Nardi and now Popyrin. His defeats at the Majors against his two biggest rivals, Jannik Sinner in Australia and Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon, were both desperately one-sided. That Djokovic reached the Wimbledon final just six weeks after surgery on the medial meniscus of his right knee is a testament to the fact that he can still be a force at Grand Slams. That Alcaraz defeated him so easily in that final is a testament to the sense that his defeats now, after so long, have the capacity to turn ugly very quickly.

It happened against Popyrin, in front of 24,000 people at Arthur Ashe. Djokovic has been recovering for months, slowly increasing his physical exertion, and in that time his play has necessarily suffered. His ball and tactical talents are still there, and he has even added a turbo boost when he needs it, ripping two forehands past Alcaraz in the second set tiebreak at the Olympics.

His thoughts after his defeat against Popyrin did not take that into account.

“I played the worst tennis I’ve ever played, honestly, and I served by far the worst ever,” Djokovic told reporters during a brief post-match press conference as Friday night turned into Saturday morning.

Since returning from surgery, his service motion has been clumsy, especially in terms of follow-up. He looks shaky when he lands and often stumbles into the court. But the ball is still in the penalty area. This was not the case in this tournament, where he made 52 percent of his first serves, against a career average in the mid-60s. He hit 32 double faults in 38 service games, spread over three rounds.

He also acknowledged that it was difficult to get here so soon after the height of the Olympics, and that he wasn’t really in the right state to compete. “I put a lot of effort into winning the gold, and I arrived in New York not feeling fresh mentally and physically,” he said.

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“But because it’s the US Open, I tried and did my best.”

This is all completely understandable; it’s just Djokovic. Aside from the comedown from 2016 to 2018 after completing the career Grand Slam, what’s remarkable about him is his ability to always keep going, even as he’s ticked monumental achievement after monumental achievement off his list.

That was not the case against Popyrin. He looked lifeless, had difficulty waking up as he normally does, and was remarkably quiet – barely making any noise when he hit the ball – even in moments of great exertion and stress. The crowd playing was half-hearted. The tight matches invariably went against him, instead of for him. The famous rope-a-dope in the first set that culminated in a dominant four-set victory never came.

In the third set and the first part of the fourth, when Popyrin broke down on serve, missing and criticizing himself, it seemed that the inevitable would come. But it was not the inevitable of the past twenty years that presented itself. It was the inevitable of the past eight months.

Alexei Popyrin overcame a wobble midway through the match to seize control in the fourth set. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

As his Grand Slam season draws to a close, the phenomenal achievement of winning Olympic gold is increasingly looking like a shiny distraction in analytical terms. Nothing can diminish the magnitude of doing that at the age of 37, not least Djokovic’s reaction when he fell into the clay and shook with tears, but it has still been quite a disappointing year for him. There are extenuating circumstances – not just Djokovic’s knee, but also the blow to the head from a metal water bottle in Rome – that have made reaching his usual heights even more challenging.

He returns for the Australian Open desperate to regain the title he won back from Jannik Sinner 10 times, but what happened on Friday was no coincidence. It was not an earth-shattering result, like when he lost to Sam Querrey at Wimbledon in 2016, which turned the tennis world upside down. The loss to Popyrin, which came close to him at this year’s Australian Open and also at Wimbledon, was consistent with many of his defeats this year.

Winning in Paris was the outlier, and even though it was a Grand Slam final; semi-final; and the quarter-final is a year when the vast majority of players would retire at any age, Djokovic doesn’t think so. Until 2024, he had won a major title every year since 2010, but before 2017.

“From a bigger perspective, of course, I have to be satisfied,” Djokovic said when asked to take a longer-term view himself. Seeing whether Djokovic has the opportunity to reset his goals in the coming year, and whether he is happy with it, will be one of the defining stories in tennis in 2025.

(Top photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)