Hammered in straight sets by Bjorn Borg in the 1978 Wimbledon final, Jimmy Connors vowed to follow his arch-rival “to the ends of the Earth” to get even.
“Every tournament he plays, I’ll be waiting,” said Connors after a 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 defeat. “Every time he turns around, he’ll see my shadow across his. I’m going to dog him, because I know that what we do in the next few years is going to be remembered long after we’re both six feet underground.”
The pursuit did not last long. Two months later, Connors caught up with Borg on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows, where he romped to the fifth of his eight grand slam titles with a 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 victory, a near-mirror reversal of his defeat at the All England Club. Having previously claimed the championship on grass and clay at Forest Hills, the American famously became the only player in history to win the US Open on three different surfaces.
Even so, it was hard to know what gave Connors greater satisfaction: carving a unique place in the annals of his home major, or ending Borg’s bid for a calendar-year grand slam. Connors has admitted that, had he failed to thwart his adversary’s bid to add the US Open to his Roland Garros and Wimbledon triumphs, he would have competed at the Australian Open. In an era when the happy slam was still held in December, that was an unappealing prospect; most top players favoured rest and relaxation over the prospect of flying halfway across the world for another grand slam campaign. For Connors, though, competitive zeal trumped R&R every time; stopping the Swede had become almost an obsession.
“Borg had announced he would consider playing the Australian Open at the end of the year if he still had a chance at the grand slam,” Connors wrote in his memoir. “I couldn’t let that happen. I wanted to hunt him down and even the score as soon as I could. If that meant flying halfway around the world to Australia, then that’s what I was going to do.”
With that background in mind, Connors clearly strayed deep into pot-and-kettle territory when he warned last week that Carlos Alcaraz should be wary about fixating on Novak Djokovic at the expense of other rivals. His comments followed an interview in which Alcaraz admitted that, with the battle to secure the year-end No 1 ranking approaching its endgame, Djokovic has been occupying his thoughts constantly in training.
“Almost in every practice, I’m not going to lie,” Alcaraz said when asked how often the Serbian world No 1 was on his mind. “I practise with a goal, I go to tournaments with a goal: it’s to try to end the year as the No 1. So Novak Djokovic is around my mind in almost every practice.
“I watch his practice, his movement, the way that he plays and he trains. It is something I want. He puts 100% in every shot, in every practice, in every game, so it’s something I try to put in my own game.”
Connors acknowledged that he could relate to those sentiments, and no wonder. After his 1978 US Open victory, the American went on to clinch the year-end No 1 ranking for the fourth year in a row – and never mind if most neutral observers regarded Borg, winner of two majors to his one, as the best player in the world that season. Alcaraz, who trails Djokovic by 500 points in the ATP’s race for No 1, is trying to pull off something similar, although his prospects of overhauling the 24-time grand slam champion look a lot more complicated following his withdrawal from the Vienna Open with foot and back problems.
But while the goals now and then may be comparable, the respective approaches could hardly be more different. Connors, a strutting street fighter with an unshakeable belief in his own ability, would never have dreamed of emulating a rival, much less admitted it in public. So long as he was hitting the ball “real firm, real well” – and he invariably was – Jimbo couldn’t have cared less what anyone else was doing.
But tennis, perhaps for the worse, is a more gentlemanly pursuit these days. There may be distant echoes of Connors in Alcaraz’s crisp ball-striking and penchant for showmanship, but the Spaniard’s worldview allows little space for bravado and belligerence. In an age where the three-way rivalry between Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic has established a template for mutual respect, there is no place for the finger-wagging and “spontaneous assholery” once so central to Connors’ schtick.
And that too is no bad thing. The lack of antagonism among today’s top players may have rendered the sport more anodyne, and many doubtless yearn for a 21st-century equivalent to the rivalry between Connors and John McEnroe. But less friction and machismo also means more space for young players to study and assimilate elements of their peers’ games, and to be open about doing so. Djokovic is one of the greatest players in history; it would be strange if a player of Alcaraz’s talent and potential didn’t look to the Serb’s example.
“I get that,” said Connors, speaking on his podcast, of the Wimbledon champion’s preoccupation with Djokovic. “Even though Alcaraz beat him at Wimbledon, he’s been kind of a thorn in his side a little bit. But you’ve got to be careful doing that, because then you’re preparing for only one guy.
“You’ve got to be prepared for everybody that you play. So it’s your game. I would go out and I’d work on my game, because I thought my game should be good enough to play anybody. Not just to play one guy, but to play anybody.
“So what would that take? It’s not just Novak. It’s [Jannik] Sinner and [Daniil] Medvedev and a little bit of everything. If I do that against Sinner, that’ll work against him, but it may not work against Medvedev, so what do I have to do for that? That’s the great thing about tennis – the different games and the different styles and the different characters and the different personalities.”
Valid points all, and yet it should also be acknowledged that Alcaraz, whose extraordinary versatility has been a defining feature of his rise, is a special case. The completeness of his game invites comparison with Federer and yet, even by those rarefied standards, the 20-year-old has been on an accelerated timetable. While the Swiss needed time to learn how best to bring his talents to bear, Alcaraz won his first US Open at 19, four years before the Swiss, and his first Wimbledon at 21, a year earlier. There is not only a Federeresque quality about Alcaraz’s game; he has also come to understand it sooner.
Range, then, is not the Spaniard’s problem. He has plentiful options, and his ability to tailor them to circumstance is far beyond his years. Alcaraz’s problem, specifically, is Djokovic. And it is therefore Djokovic who preoccupies his thoughts. The man who denied him a first French Open final this summer. The man who saved a match point to wrest the Cincinnati Masters title from his grasp in a thrilling final-set tiebreak. The guy who mopped up three of the four majors this year, and whom Alcaraz barely prevented from completing a full house in another nail-biting final at the All England Club. His heavyweight rivalry with Sinner notwithstanding, if Alcaraz’s career were a Rocky film, it would be Djokovic’s picture pinned to his bathroom mirror.
In the circumstances, it would be surprising if Alcaraz weren’t poring over Djokovic’s methods, trying to work out exactly what his rival is doing that he isn’t. Crucially, though, that doesn’t mean Alcaraz has taken his eye off the ball. And if he had, his record since Wimbledon would have done plenty to refocus the attention.
Either side of the semi-final defeat to Medvedev that ended his reign as US Open champion, Alcaraz suffered defeats to Tommy Paul in Toronto, Djokovic in Cincinnati, Sinner in Beijing and Grigor Dimitrov in Shanghai. Taken individually, none of those setbacks would be deemed more than mildly surprising. Paul, Djokovic and Sinner have all caused the world No 2 problems in the past, Medvedev was probably overdue a win following his decisive losses to Alcaraz in Indian Wells and at Wimbledon, and an in-form Dimitrov remains a tough proposition for anyone.
It is the fact that Alcaraz’s defeats have come in a post-Wimbledon cluster that has spawned a mild sense of malaise – if, indeed, a run that includes a final, two semis and a quarter-final can be meaningfully described in those terms. In that regard, the Murcian is a victim of his own success. After missing the Australian Open with a hamstring injury, Alcaraz won six of his first 10 tournaments, only once failing to make the semi-finals. It was a spectacular run, but also unsustainable.
“Maintaining 100% in the 80 matches he plays a year is impossible,” Alex Corretja, the former French Open finalist, explained recently. “One of the keys for Alcaraz is to select the calendar well, due to travel, training, and changes in schedules and hotels.”
In that respect, Alcaraz would surely do well to take a leaf out of Djokovic’s book. Despite starting his season almost two months earlier, Djokovic played three fewer events than Alcaraz by the conclusion of the grass court season. His return was half that of the younger man and yet, of the three titles he won, two were grand slams. Sometimes, less is more.
Together with Nadal and Federer, Djokovic has established a gold standard for judicious scheduling, never overplaying while meticulously tailoring his preparations to peak at the majors. It is an approach that has allowed him, even at the age of 36, to keep amassing grand slam titles with metronomic consistency. With his year ending much as it began, hampered by injury, Alcaraz could learn a thing or two from the Serbian superman about the art of navigating a long and arduous season. Perhaps he should pay more heed to Djokovic, not less – whatever the greats of yesteryear might suggest to the contrary.
2 comments
Spot on with this write-up, I really believe that this site needs a lot more attention. I’ll probably be back again to read through more, thanks for
the information!
Glad you enjoyed the piece, Candy. Thank you for your kind words.
Comments are closed.