And then something happened that had never happened before.
Novak Djokovic lost to Jannik Sinner in the semifinals of the Australian Open on Friday. He lost a semi-final or final for the first time in the tournament and won a record ten times – a perfect 20-0 in the tournament's most important games.
Sinner, the rising 22-year-old Italian who beat Djokovic twice late last year, defeated his strangely out-of-sync opponent early – before stopping one of his trademark advances – to beat the 24-time Grand Slam champion 6-1, 6- 2, 6-7(6), 6-3.
Djokovic could have gone quietly but didn't, fending off the end with a sweeping backhand and a magical topspin lob and saving match point by pressuring Sinner to fire a forehand into the net. When he halved the deficit two points later and came within a set, he turned to the crowd with a grin and clenched fist as he strutted to the edge of the court and cheers of “Novak, Novak” rained down on him. Anyone who watched Djokovic escape so many near-death experiences, particularly in Australia, would have been a fool not to think another wild comeback was on the cards.
Not on this day. Not against Sinner, who not only didn't let Djokovic break his serve once, but also never gave him a single chance. Sinner also broke Djokovic five times, the decisive time coming early in the fourth set, in a game as strange as Djokovic's afternoon. Sinner went from 40-0 to 40-0, then accepted the rare luck of a double fault and a long forehand to take a 3-1 lead. And then all he had to do was do the same thing he'd been doing all day, and that's what he did.
With a final perfect forehand down the line, Sinner had sealed the victory and Djokovic trudged to the net in defeat. Within seconds he had his bags on his shoulders, his hands in the air and both thumbs up to the crowd who were treating him like one of their own.
(Martin Keep/AFP via Getty Images)
“I tried to keep pushing,” said Sinner. “I lost to him in the Wimbledon semifinals last year. I learned a lot from that.”
Roger Federer is retired. Rafael Nadal is almost there. Djokovic's final challenge is to fend off the next generation, led by Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, for as long as possible. It's shaping up to be the ultimate intergenerational spectacle, full of nerves, twists and subplots at every turn.
Sinner stormed out of the starting gate like the junior ski champion he was. He did almost everything right in the first set, and Djokovic, who did almost everything wrong, helped him immensely.
“I was in some ways shocked at my level, you know, at worst,” a dejected Djokovic said after the match. “I didn’t do much right in the first two sentences. I reckon this is one of the worst Grand Slam matches I've ever played. At least that’s what I remember.”
He pushed Djokovic deep behind the baseline, then sent him on the runs, chasing balls that bounced beyond the boundary lines, then shot into the open court for those points when Djokovic was able to catch up and get the ball back.
He hit a solid 65 percent of his first serves and won 80 percent of those points, depriving Djokovic of even a semblance of a chance to do much damage. He chose the right moments to rush forward and won the point every time he went into the net.
However, it takes two to play tennis, and Sinner's strength was greatly enhanced by Djokovic's inability to do even normal Djokovic tasks early on – stretching points until his opponent's game collapses, using his serve to keep Sinner in the back Pinning down part of the court, or even landing his first serve with some consistency. His backhand, perhaps the most reliable and dangerous of all backhands in tennis, sailed wide or long and sometimes both, over and over again.
As the first set ended, a set Djokovic almost never plays, his stats told an ugly story – he made just 43 percent of his first serves and won just 15 of the 43 points he and Sinner played.
The second set was similar, with some minor improvements but almost the same results. An early break of serve from Sinner and another late. Djokovic hunts and grabs balls and sends them into the middle of the net. Attempts to push forward ended with his head whipping around and him watching another pass whiz past. Fourteen unforced errors, outscored 28-17.
Even in tennis it takes two, and it's never entirely clear how much one player's outstanding play causes the other's crap. On Friday afternoon, when Djokovic largely dominated the court, never losing a semifinal or final where no one has beaten him in five years, the answer, as always, was twofold.
(David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
Since Sinner came onto the tour and made his first Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance at the French Open in 2020, there has been one word that smart people in tennis have used to describe Sinner: solid. In many ways, it's the ultimate compliment, the thing fellow players say about someone who always shows up and almost never beats themselves.
“I just tried to play as relaxed as possible, but also have the right game plan in mind,” said Sinner. “I think it went really well today.”
Sinner was as solid as ever and, after a slow start, left Djokovic little chance of landing the first punch on the jaw and smothering him, as he has done so many times in front of so many others. Djokovic knows how to step on an opponent better than anyone who has ever played. But first he has to throw her to the ground, and he never did.
There's another word that gets thrown around in the locker room and on the training pitch when players and their coaches talk about Sinner. It describes the feeling of his ball when it hits the bat – it is “heavy”.
Combine a heavy ball with someone who rarely makes mistakes, especially on his own serve, and play on a set of 22-year-old legs that now move as well as anyone else's, and it becomes almost the best player of the world need planet and there are very few players on the planet who aren't in for a tough afternoon. Sometimes you're flat and slow and error-prone because your opponent makes you that way, even if you're Novak Djokovic.
Djokovic had a mostly expressionless expression on his face throughout. He barely looked at his coach Goran Ivanisevic and asked for suggestions. He didn't yell at his box for not giving him more support. He didn't break a racket on the net post. He didn't argue with any of the Sinner fans, who weren't afraid to shout their support for their man, often in Italian, one of the many languages Djokovic speaks fluently.
Mostly, these are things Djokovic does against weaker opponents when he can expend the energy to chase a spark. Against Sinner on Friday, everyone could tell from the first ball that he would need every ounce of energy in his reserves. And even more.
“Throughout the tournament I didn’t really give it my best,” Djokovic said. “I didn't really feel comfortable on the court during this tournament. Of course you can say that the semi-final is a great result, but I always expect the highest from myself and that shouldn’t be today.”
Whatever he had, whatever he did, it wasn't enough. It was the first time since the 2022 French Open that he failed to reach the final of a Grand Slam he played. Late in the afternoon at Melbourne Park, Djokovic's record in the semifinals and final of the Australian Open fell to 20-1.
(Photo: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)