When Novak Djokovic thinks he’s hit a winner on an important point, he often elongates his grunt as the ball comes off his racquet. So it was no surprise when he did just that in Paris on Sunday at the end of one of the most cathartic victories of his career, over Carlos Alcaraz in the Olympic gold-medal match at Roland Garros.
In the second-set tiebreak, Djokovic sprinted down the homestretch and wasted no time crossing the finish line. On match point, he took the first forehand he saw, reached back a little farther than normal on his swing, made his grunt extend a little longer, and clubbed the ball with total confidence. Even the speedy Alcaraz, who normally gets to everything, could only hang his head and wave as it went by.
For me, the shot triggered memories of another, similar Olympic match point from 12 years earlier. This one belonged to Serena Williams, when she won her own long-sought singles gold medal, in a rout over Maria Sharapova on Centre Court. On match point, Serena also reached back a little farther to hit her serve, and sent an ace screaming straight down the T. Her celebratory yell seemed to come even before the ball had left her strings.
That Serena celebration didn’t just pop into my mind from nowhere. At the same time that Djokovic was inching, sometimes gingerly, toward gold, I watched “In the Arena,” the ESPN documentary on Serena’s career. The juxtaposition made me think about their careers side-by-side.
Djokovic has 24 major titles; Williams finished with 23. Serena won four straight majors—the Serena Slam—in 2002-03 and 2014-15; Djokovic won four straight—the Djoker Slam—in 2015-16. They each won the first three legs of a calendar-year Grand Slam—Williams in 2015, Djokovic in 2021—before falling late at the US Open. Now, along with Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi, and Rafael Nadal, they’re two of the five players who have won a career Golden Slam in singles. (Williams also has one in doubles with her sister Venus, just for kicks.)
The Golden Slam is not an ideal metric for measuring all-time greatness. It only became possible in 1988, and winning gold requires the stars to align in a way that even a dominant player can’t always control. Roger Federer might have one if Juan Martin del Potro hadn’t forced him to win a 19-17 third set in their semifinal in London in 2012; two days later, Andy Murray rolled over Federer for gold. Williams and Djokovic, the consensus GOATs of the Open Era, didn’t complete theirs until they were 30 and 37, respectively.
But winning gold at the Games does show an ability to seize the moment.
In tennis, there’s always another match, another tournament, another major coming down the pike. Not so in the Olympics.
The British sportswriter Simon Barnes has described the Games as being about Now, with a capital N. When you compete in them, you know that tomorrow won’t come for four years, which in the precarious life of a world-class athlete essentially means that there is no tomorrow—it’s now or quite possibly never. That was doubly true for Serena in 2012 and Djokovic in 2024. They had always wanted Olympic gold, and both knew this could be their last chance. But they took it.
The American and the Serb traveled different roads to those medals, and each represents a different type of peak moment in their careers.
Serena, who was entering a late period of post-30 dominance in 2012, lost just eight games in her last four matches, and beat Sharapova, a career Slam winner herself, 6-0, 6-1 in the final. She may never have been more unplayable than she was during that week.
Djokovic, at 37, is closer to the end than Serena was, and had a rockier road to gold. He tweaked a knee injury, and had to scrap to keep from going three sets against Stefanos Tsitsipas. While he cruised past a subpar Nadal in the second round, he had to dig as deeply as he ever has to edge the 21-year-old Alcaraz in two tiebreakers in the final. For Djokovic, this was a career capstone, the final piece in his puzzle, as he said, and the moment when he finally felt like he was “enough.”
Yet throughout his golden run, Djokovic reminded me of Serena. Specifically, the way she could look as if she was destined to lose a match to a younger and seemingly spryer opponent, only to decide at some point that she was going to win, and then, to your amazement, make it happen by playing the best tennis you think you’ve ever seen from her.
Djokovic did something like that against Tsitsipas. Down 1-4 in the second set to the Greek, he had his knee examined. Then, on more than one occasion, he let Tsitsipas get right up to the edge of winning the set. But Djokovic never looked alarmed, and never let Tsitsipas get over that edge. He saved break points at 1-4, and a set point later. By the time they reached the tiebreak, he was the stronger player again.
The final against Alcaraz felt similar. The Spaniard was favored, he had just beaten Djokovic in straights in the Wimbledon final, he’s 16 years younger, and at 4-4 in the first set he had five break points. Again, Djokovic wouldn’t let his younger opponent get over the edge. Again, once he got his teeth into a tiebreaker, there was nothing Alcaraz, the putative future of the sport, could do about it.
Serena was famous for not winning much for months, then locking in at a Slam and taking him the trophy. Coming to Paris, Djokovic hadn’t won a title in 2024, but he got the one he wanted most.
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