Novak Djokovic optimized his mind and body for tennis. At the U.S. Open, he found his mojo

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FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — Novak Djokovic did something important Friday night at the U.S. Open.

After wandering through his first two matches in something like a daze, devoid of nearly all his intensity and passion and looking like he didn’t care all that much about the outcome, he found his mojo.

Djokovic, 38, spent his first two matches looking like he wanted to be anywhere but Flushing Meadows. He appeared downright disinterested during his first-round win over the young American Learner Tien on the opening night of the tournament. He faced some real jeopardy in the next round against another young American, Zachary Svajda, who took the first set and was up a break in the second. Djokovic barely bothered with the usual protocol of his off-nights and slow days, when he badgers his coaches and sometimes snaps a racket to fire himself up.

Svajda ultimately succumbed as Tien had done, partly due to cramping. Through both matches, Djokovic barely acknowledged the thousands of fans that packed Arthur Ashe Stadium to get their fill of the 24-time Grand Slam champion before he drifts over the rainbow,

But after two cranky sets against Cameron Norrie on Friday, which included a medical timeout after an awkward twist at the net, Djokovic got his groove back. He served as well as he ever has at the U.S. Open, with 18 aces. He defended all across the baseline. He chased down drop shots, pumped his fists, roused the crowd for big noise after his best shots, and even wriggled a few slinky dance steps after a massive, roaring forehand gave him match point for a four-set win.

But as he moves into the second week of a Grand Slam for the 69th time in his career, Djokovic comes face-to-face with a question that he hasn’t had to confront in a long time, if ever: Does it matter?

Djokovic plays Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany on Sunday. At 35, Struff is a rare contemporary of Djokovic. He’s 0-7 against the Serbian. If Djokovic makes it 0-8, he will get the winner of Tomáš Macháč and Taylor Fritz. Fritz, last year’s beaten singles finalist, is 0-11 against Djokovic; Macháč, a preternatural Czech talent with some of the best pure strokes on the planet, beat Djokovic last year in Geneva.

But that was in three sets, with Djokovic still recovering from accidentally being struck on the head with a metal water bottle at the Italian Open. Macháč crumbled in the crucible of Grand Slam pressure in Australia this January, losing in three sets in 2 hours and 22 minutes.

If he gets through those two matches, he will once again be just two wins from a 25th Grand Slam title. But, in all likelihood, Carlos Alcaraz, 22, and Jannik Sinner, 24, will be looming on the final weekend. Djokovic knows of the potential hopelessness that those two players give opponents more than perhaps anybody else.

He spoke his truth at Wimbledon in July, after losing to Sinner in a major semifinal for the second time in five weeks. On both occasions, the Italian’s victory clinched a final against Alcaraz.

“They’re definitely several levels above everyone right now,” Djokovic said.

Then he essentially disappeared for five weeks for an extended vacation with his family. They generally spend the weeks between Wimbledon and the hard-court swing in North America in Montenegro, before he reappears in Mason, Ohio, for the Cincinnati Open.

Djokovic skipped that, opting to rest his mind and his body and extend the family time. After that loss on the grass to Sinner, he said that this year of tennis had introduced him to a new, undesirable pattern. At all three Grand Slams, he arrived at the business end of the tournament with his gas tank half-empty. His mind said go. His body said no.

In Melbourne, he injured his hamstring in his feverish quarterfinal win over Alcaraz and retired after one set of his semifinal match against Alexander Zverev.

In Paris, he came out flat against Sinner, fell behind quickly and spent the rest of the evening trying to catch up. By the time he found some rhythm and a second or third wind in the third set, Sinner had the finish line in sight. Djokovic had to play perfect tennis, which he very nearly did, but it was already too late.

At Wimbledon in July, he fell hard on the Centre Court grass on one of the final points of his quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli, injuring his hip. He was able to play his semifinal against Sinner, but his movement was limited and he lost in three sets.

Since then, he has been trying to solve one more fitness riddle. Djokovic had mastered surviving two weeks of five-set tennis, over a two-decade career that has seen him win 24 of the most important titles in his sport, more than any man in the modern era.

Then two generational talents came along. They require a different form of mastery from the one that contemporaries Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray demanded.

For going on two decades, Djokovic has been willing to try just about anything if it will provide his body a tenth of a percentage point improvement.

He eats and drinks like an ascetic, though he doesn’t see it that way. He forgoes alcohol and tries as often as he can to eat produce from high-quality soil.

He has locked himself inside egg-shaped hyperbaric chambers to mitigate recuperation from competition and training. He has worn mysterious patches on his chest when he plays. His post-match gym sessions sometimes look harder than other players’ off-season fitness training.

And yet he knows it might be all for nothing.

“I don’t think there is much more that I could do than what I’m doing now, to be honest,” Djokovic said after the win over Norrie. This is not the easiest thing for anyone to accept, especially someone who has never confronted a mountain he could not climb or an obstacle he could not overcome on the tennis court.

Now he is running into time and the realities of growing older, the walls that anyone who has ever played a sport eventually fails to blast through. He’s playing a game he knows he’s unlikely to win, one he’s ultimately going to lose, maybe even in a few days, even if he does have a couple more moments against the likes of Fritz, Struff and Macháč.

There are some buzzsaws waiting on the other side. And even if he finds the four-leaf clover in the vast meadow and manages one last win over one of the two best players in the world, he’s likely going to have to beat the other one, too.

“If the body doesn’t listen to me when I go deep in the Grand Slam tournaments, as it was kind of the case the last few Slams, then that’s a hard one to swallow for me,” he said after beating Norrie.

“I know the amount of hours I’m putting in daily to care for my body, but at the same time, you know, biological age is not something that you can reverse, and it is what it is. The wear and tear on the body all these years is taking a toll, and I’m aware of it, but I’m resisting it.”

Sometimes that goes better than others. For two and a half matches during the first week of his 81st Grand Slam, it wasn’t going well at all, and Djokovic didn’t even try to hide how he felt about it. He promised his on-court demeanor was only a result of his frustration with his level of play, and not a reflection of not wanting to be in New York competing, knowing that if he played well and advanced, he was going to miss his daughter Tara’s birthday on Sept. 2, which he was not happy about.

In his on-court interview after beating Norrie, he pointed down the camera like a supervillain in a film, warning any rivals watching that he would not reveal his physical secrets.

Djokovic’s body has got in the way of his quest for 25 Grand Slam titles at the previous three majors. Mike Stobe / Getty Images)

He knew there was a risk in coming in cold, though he had trained seriously in the three weeks leading up to the tournament. The Masters 1000 events like Cincinnati, which now stretch to nearly two weeks, are too long for him, he said.

Competition, physicality, endurance — those were no problem. The problem was that he wasn’t playing well.

“It’s not a motivation thing,” he said. “It’s just like me being a bit frustrated with my game, and then I kind of go through stuff internally that you don’t want to know the details of what I’m going through and telling myself. I’m just trying to be locked in. Just trying to solve the riddle once I’m on the court.”

Then came the physical problems early in the match against Norrie. Leading 5-3 in the first set, Djokovic twisted awkwardly for a volley as he ran across the court and appeared to tweak his lower back. He left the court for a medical timeout and received treatment for about five minutes before resuming play.

Djokovic served out the first set but faltered in the second, unable to get the required torque to effectively execute his ground strokes. He received further treatment after the third game of that set, swallowed some painkillers, and embarked on a familiar routine of trying to keep the match close and buy time as the medication began to work, which usually takes 30-45 minutes.

At 4-4, in the second set, he moved sharply to his right to chase down a ball and jarred his body as he planted his feet to push back toward the middle of the court. He stumbled to the ground and rose slowly.

Leading 4-1 in the third set after Norrie had drawn even, Djokovic came up gingerly after a quick move to his right, sustaining some pain in his right foot that forced him to essentially concede the next three points.

For Djokovic, it looked like it was about to become the third Grand Slam of the year that ended with his body failing him. But then came the mojo, and the fist pumps and the playing to the crowd. The full-bore, first-strike tennis which has supplanted the mastery of baseline attrition that he made his trademark clicked into gear. Norrie had little answer to any of it, but Djokovic’s body continued to ask his brain plenty of questions.

Now he has to figure out the answer to the biggest ones of all: How far it can take him; how long he wants to try to work through that puzzle and whether or not the payoff he needs is even attainable. As long as he can convince himself, he wants to keep trying. He says he still enjoys the competition and the challenge, but there is an ongoing conversation with himself about how long this ride keeps going.

He’d prefer not to find that out this week, but he knows he can only push it off for so long.

“I try to focus my thoughts and my attention to this very present moment of what needs to be done,” he said. “I might get a little more philosophical again when I finish the tournament.”

(Top photo: Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)