In Melbourne, last night at 7:30pm local time, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz walked on to Rod Laver Arena to compete in the championship of the Men’s Singles for the Australian Open. History hung above each man’s head, waiting to crown either one of them: Carlos, at 22, trying to become the youngest person ever to win all four majors; Novak, at 38, trying to become the oldest person to win a major, and the only person to win 25. I set my alarm to go off at 3:20am ET, but my eyes opened on their own at 3:10. Usually, I loathe mornings. But today I woke up like I imagine a leopard does: instantly alert and fully present.

Has there ever been a more compelling and unprecedented matchup in the history of sports? If such a question sounds like mere rhetorical hyperbole, it’s only partly so. This is Jordan vs. Lebron, with Jordan going for ring number 7 and Lebron trying to win his first just out of high school. With a 16 year age gap separating them, Novak and Carlos rightly belong to different eras of tennis: Novak is the third of “the big three,” who has somehow managed to stay at the very top of the game[1]; and Alcaraz is the passionate half of “the next two,” who, along with the more composed Sinner, have separated themselves from the rest of the men’s tour, splitting all of the major titles for the last 2 years between each other, and leaving the rest to fight over the scraps. But after a stunning 5-set, 4-hour victory over Sinner at 1:30am two nights before, Djokovic has finally clawed his way back to the finals table. Setting up this tantalizing and baffling head-to-head.

But as I sat there, brimming with excitement, I still wondered: why does this match seem to mean so much to me? Yes, there’s the history of it all. And that is cool. Plus, there’s the added specific vicarious pleasure of watching a man in his later thirties beat up on guys in their early twenties, as Djokovic has been doing for years, and certainly did to Sinner in his last match. I like that too. But it’s still more than that. My friend Steve texted me yesterday joking that what made the Alcaraz/Djokovic matchup so compelling is that it’s good vs bad: Alcaraz is the good guy, and Djokovic is the bad guy, and even the latter’s fans (deep down) know this. And that joke made me indignant.  

Is this because it’s true? Many tennis fans feel so. Novak was the third guy to ruin the party when everyone was already happily divided in adoration between Federer and Nadal: the cool, cultivated Swiss; and the powerful, sweating Spaniard. Nobody really wanted a third, least of all some scrawny kid from Serbia; a country most only associated with a horrible war, not chocolate and watches, beaches and siestas. I think it’s telling that Novak has always enjoyed more fan support in Asia and South America; it’s Western Europe and North America that have held him at arm’s length. And even (or especially) once Novak proved himself to be every bit as great a tennis player as the other two, he never got the respect he desired and deserved. And this in part became a self-fulfilling dynamic: whereas he was once the tour jester, acting out funny imitations of different player’s styles to make the crowds laugh, he soon enough developed a chip on his shoulder, becoming testy and prickly.

It’s easy to keep being the good guy when everyone loves you, as they always did for Federer and Nadal, and now do the same for Alcaraz. But despite being the more thoughtful and funnier person—to say nothing of being the objectively better player—Novak never got the love. Just last year at the Australian Open, when Novak had to retire due to an injury in the semi-finals, the Melbourne fans, in an astoundingly atrocious and simply stupid show of ingratitude, booed him off the court. Imagine that: Federer booed off Wimbledon when he injures his groin! Never.

Does Novak sometimes meet the tennis fans halfway in their antagonism? Yes, sometimes he does. But who wouldn’t. It is a deeply human response to the situation of always fighting uphill for acknowledgment of one’s achievements. I myself, when I first started watching tennis relatively recently in 2020, made what I now acknowledge to be a mistake, and began my fandom by siding with Nadal and Federer against Novak. But I see now that I was massaged in that direction by the industry, who wants its darlings and villains.

It took a couple years of listening to his interviews and watching his games to realize I really did like Novak better as a tennis player. The kind of greatness that Novak brings to the court takes longer to truly appreciate. It’s not the flashy aces and hammered overheads that finish points like his two great rivals; it’s the controlled redirection from the low corners of the court, the relentless pressure he makes his opponents feel, until they crack, which they all did.

It was personal for me: I’d had my come to Jesus moment as a Novak fan, and now, like all true converts, was all the more zealous for it. In fact, last night before the game started I promised myself that if Novak won, I would get a tattoo of a little tennis racquet to commemorate his achievement and my love for the game. And so here I was, at 3:25am, coffee machine percolating in the kitchen, sat on the sofa in in my pajamas, but ready to pump my fist in solidarity with my favourite athlete.   

And boy did Novak come out firing. After worrying that he might still be feeling the effects of his last 4 hour game; after worrying that getting to bed at 4am (a mere two and a half hours before the sun rises in Melbourne) while adrenaline was likely still coursing through his veins, might not be conducive to the 38-year old’s recovery routine; after worrying that he might be feeling the weight of this moment for any number of reasons—Novak came out swinging, and put all those worries to bed.   

After breaking early in the first set at 3-1, and then consolidating to go up 4-1, Djokovic won the first two points of the next game, to make it 0-30 on Alcaraz’s serve.  With a chance to go up three break points at 4-1, Djokovic pulled Alcaraz far into the deuce court, and then lined up a forehand to the ad-side, but hit it just long, to make the score 15-30. Alcaraz managed to score the next few points to get the hold at 2-4. I remember fearing that if Alcaraz could break back, he’d be right back in the set. But Djokovic went right back to playing the same lights out tennis that won him the match against Sinner. He held to 5-2, and then broke Alcaraz again to win the set 6-2, in just 33 minutes. It was as good a set of tennis as anyone has ever produced ever; put back to back with the 5th set against Sinner, Novak had just shown the world number #1 and #2 that he was still capable of surpassing them, of taking his tennis somewhere they couldn’t quite follow. I was on my feet, fist in the air above my head. A dream start.

One thing I love about tennis is how the players are left to themselves on the court, all alone for hours, to navigate on their own many ups and downs of the match. This solitary element of tennis altered somewhat over a year ago, when the rules changed to now allow coaches to officially continue to help their players with tactics once the game started. Personally, I don’t like this rule change, but it’s here now.[2] So after getting spanked the first set, at this point, Carlos went to his box and asked his team if he should continue to stand close to the baseline to return Novak’s second serves (which would steal time), or back up, and take a bigger hit. They told him to do the latter; to give more shape to his ball, playing with more margin over the net, and less pace for Novak on the other side, which he only uses to his own advantage anyways. In the second set, Alcaraz started hitting his forehands a foot higher above the net, with the higher ball bouncing out of Novak’s strike zone. And this made a big difference. But it wasn’t the decisive thing, in my opinion.

For me, tennis is just as much about psychology as physicality, if not more so.  And so I look for those moments where it seems something shifts inside of the player. The first of these moments came early in the second set: tied at 1-1 and even at 15:15, Novak was serving, when Carlos struck a forehand that hit the top of the net cord and shot straight up a few feet into the air. Novak saw this and sprinted up to the net, and would have been there in plenty of time to easily finish the point at the net. Except for the fact that, instead of bouncing up off the court like it should have, the ball somehow landed on the small fold where the bottom of the net met the court, and simply fell flat. It was something that should have been impossible: theoretically the net ends where the court starts, without any extra folds at the bottom. For a moment Djokovic even looked in desperation towards the umpire, as if to say ‘what happens now? Do we replay that? I just got robbed!’

It wasn’t really a big deal. And just last night Djokovic had escaped from being down 0-40 against Sinner a couple times. But something about the manner in which he now found himself down 15-30 seemed to rattle him. On the next two points, he uncharacteristically sprayed his forehand wide. All of a sudden, Alcaraz was up a break.  

15-30 is my favourite score in a tennis game. It is this delicious hinge moment, upon which games (and therefore sets and matches) often turn. And it is all the more enticing precisely because it seems so innocuous. In contrast, 0-30 is clearly a problem, ‘a hole’ as its often called in tennis, albeit a small one compared to 0-40. Along with 15:40, these three scores seem to force an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the moment, either because you feel you don’t have any points while your opponent does, or because you see they only need one more to win the game. Those other score lines demand focus. But 15:30 hides its intensity, it doesn’t broadcast it. It leaves the player to realize for themselves, “this is a serious moment: depending on what happens now, I can either get level, or I’ll be up against a break for the next two points.” Whenever 15:30 comes along, I always perk up for this hidden hinge point of a tennis game. For whatever reason, perhaps perturbed at the very unlucky non-bounce, Novak blinked at this 15:30, and now Carlos had the upper hand.  

Later on in the set, at 4-2 for Alcaraz, but level at 15:15 on Novak’s serve, Novak hit a wide serve, that took Carlos past the double alley on the deuce side to return it. Carlos hit it right back to Novak, and Novak redirected the ball to the other side of the ad court. But in a flash Carlos was there, sliding on both feet in an open stance backhand to hit the ball up the line for a clear winner on Novak’s deuce court. It was one of those points Carlos had no business winning, but which he often does. And Carlos won the point executing what is basically Novak’s signature move. Because if Novak didn’t quite invent the sliding backhand, he certainly perfected it, using it to counterpunch against flatfooted opponents. Novak’s wild success with this move all but ensured  that the next generation of tennis players, such as Carlos, would take this once obscure move and make it a part of their basic tool kit. Having failed to convert a breakpoint, and now facing 15:30 again, Novak seemed to deflate a bit. Carlos on the other hand was now smiling for the first time in 40 minutes, which is a long time for the charming Carlitos to go without a smile.

Something inside both players had shifted. Carlos ended up winning that game, and Novak didn’t win another game the rest of the set. It was Carlos’s turn to win the second set 6:2.  

At this point, the third set became crucial. If Djokovic loses the third set, it means he’ll have to win the match in five sets. Yes, he just did that a couple nights ago, when he lost in the third set to Sinner, but came back in the fourth and fifth sets to win the match; to beat the so called ‘Djokovic 2.0,’ the young gun who supposedly took all the parts of Novak’s game and now did them even better, but who didn’t have any answers for the veteran when Novak started giving it right back to Sinner; bullying the kid who beat him in the semi-finals of the Australian Open two years ago, ending Novak’s record-setting 33 match win streak down under, from 2019-2024, spanning four titles; the wiry young Italian who then proceeded to repeatedly knock Djokovic out at the semifinals of majors for the next 2 years. Could Novak really pull off back-to-back fifth set wins against his two young super-phenom upstarts?

With a set a piece, it was now a normal best of three match. The last time Novak beat Carlos in a best of three was the 2024 Olympics Gold Medal Final in Paris. At that point, Novak had won every single important tennis trophy; in fact, he is the only player to win all 9 Masters 1000 trophies twice, and the only player to win all 4 Majors three times. He’s also won the most ATP Finals (7), and has spent the most time at the coveted #1 ranking (8 years, followed next by Federer, a full 2 years behind). Basically, Novak had every single record and trophy that mattered.

Except the Olympic Gold. Which wasn’t even considered a major tennis trophy, until it became the only shiny piece of metal Novak hadn’t won. It was only when Novak had won everything except that gold medal that both the industry and the fans started inflating the importance of the Olympics for tennis. And, of course, both Nadal and Federer had won the gold. And so Djokovic set his sights on Olympic gold, the only trophy missing from his otherwise utterly and unprecedentedly complete collection.

When he was knocked out of the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo by Zverev, it was hard to believe he’d ever even realistically get another chance. He’d be 37-years old the next time the Olympics rolled around! But four years later, there he was: facing up against his new rival, Carlos Alcaraz, who wasn’t even a top 50 player the last time Novak went for the gold; who since then had burst onto the scene, and spectacularly beat Novak on grass at Wimbledon twice in a row, most recently just a few weeks before this Olympic final; where they would now play on the exact same court that Novak had just seriously injured himself a couple months prior, but where Alcaraz was the defending champion, on his preferred surface of clay, Novak’s least favourite surface.

Everything seemed to be against Novak. But he played a flawless game; neither player able to break the other’s serve, and each set going to thrilling tie-breaks. Eventually, Novak came back from a set behind to win in the third, before bowing to pray in the red dirt, his hands shaking.

After the match, the great Argentinian player Del Potro—who himself kicked Novak out of the 2012 Olympics—shared this: “Djokovic moved me on the day of the final, when he won the gold medal. It was the first time I cried for a tennis match.” An especially poignant confession coming from a fellow professional. Novak Djokovic had finally completed tennis.

Or had he? Because all of a sudden, commentators couldn’t help but mention that, “actually, although Novak holds the record for the most majors in the Open Era, at 24, he actually shares this number with Margaret Court, a player from the 70s, who also won 24.” Yes, true, but as everyone knows, pace Margaret, the majors won before the open era (when only amateurs could play in the majors) ain’t shit.

I’m not saying Court was shit—she was a remarkable player, who went on to win oodles of trophies as a professional. But she won her first 7 Australian Open trophies as an amateur, effectively protected from competing against professionals. Which is fine, those were the rules of the system at that time. And everyone has kind of understood (and still does for the most part) that there is an asterisk beside her 24*. And so when Roger and then Rafa held the record for the most majors at 20 and 22 respectively, I actually didn’t even know that Margaret technically had more—no one ever mentioned it. It was not until Novak surpassed these two industry darlings, winning his 23^rd and then 24^th majors, that suddenly many commentators felt compelled to mention that technically, Novak is tied with Margaret.

So perhaps that’s why Novak still somehow has this fire inside him, to get the 25^th. To finally stand alone, and see if then, surely, the goal posts will not be moved on him by tennis fans once again. If he can just now win two more sets of tennis.

To do that, he’ll have to execute flawlessly. Watching his serve closely the past two weeks, I’ve begun to feel as if I can tell before he even hits the ball if his serve will be good or not. It’s all about his toss: whenever his toss is not high enough or too far ahead, his body never really quite looks right, and the ball overshoots or goes into the net. But when the toss is in the right spot, his body achieves this perfect platonic form, and the ball seems to always hit its mark.

I start predicting his serves before he hits them, and sure enough I seem to have a read on it. But then after a while, I worry I might be jinxing him, costing him precious first serves, and so I decide to just let him to his thing.

At one point in the third set, Novak races wide to track down a ball hit at a super sharp angle by Alcaraz, and not only does he get there, but he connects with it on a backhand that sends the ball around the outside of the net post to hit a stone cold winner. Except not, because Alcaraz is somehow there, and simply taps the ball back into the empty court on Novak’s side. It’s another one of those point that nobody wins except Alcaraz. I wonder if in such situations, Novak should just pretend to himself that he has won the point, to insulate his psyche from these supernatural irregularities Alcaraz conjures with his racquet. Alcaraz ends up holding, and Novak starts the next game with a double fault. Alcaraz breaks, and all of sudden it’s 3-2 for Alcaraz in the crucial third set.

And now Alcaraz is his usual self: smiling broadly, even when he makes mistakes. This is when he’s his most dangerous, when he is free, playing like the care-free cherub he perhaps truly is at his core. At another point in the third set, Alcaraz again comes up with another stunner point, and Djokovic immediately and unhesitatingly gives him a big thumbs up and then applauds with his racquet. In what other sport, pray tell, will you find that kind of sportsmanship in a championship match, where a player congratulates their opponent’s prowess, not with a grimace, but a gesture of respect. If you have a clip of a player applauding the other team’s home-run or slam dunk in the finals, let me know.

With Carlos feeling it now, at 5-3, he pushes Djokovic to 0:40 on Novak’s serve. Alcaraz has 3 set points. Amazingly, Novak claws back, winning the next three points to level up at deuce. Novak manages to get himself two chances to hold, but he can’t close it out, and finally Alcaraz does it for him on his 5^th set point, and wins the third set 6-3. At this point, with a 2-1 lead in majors, Carlos has never lost the match. Can Novak be the first to come back from behind against Carlos to win this championship?

Novak’s opening service game becomes a 12 minute back-and-forth—a battle within the battle. He saves 6 break points, to hold. For most of the remaining fourth set, each player hits a groove, neither facing a break point. Until finally, for the first time in about 2 hours Djokovic wins himself a break point opportunity. The score is 4-4, 30:40 on Alcaraz’s serve. Novak has timed his push perfectly. The spectators are screaming. If Bre wasnt sleeping in the next room, I’d be screaming too.

For the first time ever in a major, Carlos is finding that there is in fact greater support in the stands for his opponent. More importantly, Djokovic is finally getting all of the love he has always wanted, often richly deserved, and so seldom received. He just has to win this next point, and then hold his serve, and we will be into a fifth set. At that point even God will be on Novak’s side.

But Novak doesn’t break; instead Alcaraz holds to make it 5-4. When Novak holds to make it 5:5, I can’t help thinking that should have been Novak holding serve to send the match to a fifth set. I still find myself indulging in such fantasies just a couple minutes later, when Djokovic is serving at 5-6, and suddenly finds himself at 15:30—fucking 15:30. He hits the next ball into the net, and suddenly Carlos has two championship points. Novak sends his next forehand half a foot long. It’s over.

Carlos Alcaraz is now the youngest person to win all 4 majors. And that’s great. But even if Carlos hadn’t won the Australian Open until next year, he still would have become the youngest player to do so in the open era. He still had another year to make the history he made today. From a purely story standpoint, Novack had the better narrative: to win what would likely be his very last major in the same place he won his very first major, 18 years ago; to win it as the oldest champion ever, beating out his young rival, a kid in his prime, and who was a four year old when Novak was already a champion. But alas…

In his concession speech, Novak is gracious as ever. He warmly congratulates Carlos. He jokes that he had both a winning and a losing speech prepared for today, and pauses to mentally separate the two in his mind. He thanks the crowd for all their support; the same crowd that booed him when he got hurt last year. He intimates that this may be his last time at the tournament, reminding us all that we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to watch the greatest of all time do his thing on the tennis court.

I’m sure that we have many years to look forward to Carlos’s stunning shot making, served up with his charming smile, and I very much look forward to it. Because I do love Carlos too, everyone does. What I appreciate most about Carlos’s win today is how he signposted it: never having been past the quarterfinals, he came to Australia saying he’d rather win this then all the three other majors. And then he did. That suggests to me he can almost do whatever he wants out there on the court. But a part of me will never forgive Carlos for what he did today, when he denied Novak, and indeed the very sport of tennis itself, of a simply unprecedented and unrepeatable moment. Hell, maybe I’ll get that tattoo anyways, to mark the moment that never was.  

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[1] His one great rival, Federer (6 years older, and retired years ago) played an exhibition match before the start of this tournament; his other great rival, Nadal (not even a year older, and just retired a couple years ago), just like me sits down to watch this final—except courtside.

[2] Some people, perhaps a bit more prone to conspiracy theories than myself, even wonder if the change was motivated in part to aid the sport’s new superstar, Alcaraz, who for all his spontaneous brilliance on the court, often seemed to lack a necessary tactical awareness at key moments of the game. I don’t know about that, but Carlos does certainly benefit from the coaching. (Although he’s just recently fired his longtime coach and father figure, and still  seems to be doing fine!)