PARIS – The guard changed quite some time ago. Novak Djokovic, the most prolific champion in the rich history of men’s tennis, is a part-timer now and has not won a major singles title in nearly three years. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz rule his former roost.
Friday’s magnificent five-set, third-round duel between Djokovic and Brazilian teenager Joao Fonseca at Roland Garros was more about capitalizing on an improbable opportunity with Sinner and Alcaraz both somehow out of the picture. More about Fonseca coming of age than passing any torch.
We already know what Djokovic has deep inside, and if anyone had forgotten or missed the Golden Era for other programming, he reminded us. His body might have been breaking down at age 39, as he vomited on the clay and leaned on the court barrier for support, but with the ball in play, he remained a wizard of compartmentalization: a master of playing through the pain.
The baby-faced Fonseca was still a mystery. He has the weapon: a next-level forehand that when you watch it on your screen, feels like someone has hit the fast-forward button. He has the backing: a buoyant Brazilian fan base that is picking up where they left off with the mop-topped Gustavo Kuerten two decades ago.
But did Fonseca have the grit? The triple threat – cabeza, corazon y cojones — that Alcaraz’s grandfather liked to emphasize?
It is hard to think otherwise now.
On Wednesday, in the sunken and close-quarter confines of Court 14, Fonseca shrugged off a two-set deficit for the first time to wear down Dino Prizmic, a Croatian from his generation who had beaten Djokovic in Rome.
On Friday, on the grand stage of the Philippe Chatrier Court, the 30th-ranked Fonseca stared down another two-set deficit against a champion old enough to be his father whose lockdown game and Jedi mind tricks have stood the test of time.
“I think we’ve all seen today why there is hype around him,” Djokovic said of Fonseca.
Only twice in his nonpareil career has Djokovic surrendered a two-set lead in singles, and that was 16 years ago against Jurgen Melzer at Roland Garros and 18 years ago against Nikolay Davydenko in Davis Cup.
Now it has happened thrice, and though Djokovic was running out of fuel, Fonseca still had to bring all his firepower to join a club that may never have another member. He rocked the weary Djokovic again and again (and again) with full-cut forehands that left Djokovic grinning and shaking his head at both the physics at work and the moxie of youth.
But swinging freely and finding the lines would not have been quite enough for Fonseca. It was not just boom, boom, boom (though there was plenty of that). There was also subtletly in those changeup, kicked first serves that obliged Djokovic to stretch high to return; in those well-timed drop shots that left the heavy-legged Djokovic far from the ball; in that delicate one-handed backhand slice winner that the sprinting Fonseca conjured off a sharp angle from Djokovic that would have won the point against most in the forecourt.
Fonseca had to dig and think himself out of trouble on the clay, which rewards geometry as well as audacity.
“Whoever plays with me at the Grand Slams, they have to beat me,” Djokovic told Serbian reporters afterward, as reported by Sportklub. “They certainly won’t just win the match for free. I can always be proud of that. That wolf spirit that I carry is always present. Even if I play on one leg, I won’t give it to anyone. If someone beats me, like Fonseca did now, I will say congratulations and he deserved it, but I certainly won’t let him have it.”
On balance, it was quality and quantity on Friday night. The match lasted four hours and 53 minutes. Fonseca had 68 winners and 47 unforced errors; Djokovic had 70 and 39. Both finished with a first-serve percentage over 70 and just one double fault.
Those are fine numbers under Grand Slam pressure and in the heat that has turned Paris into something closer to Melbourne or Miami during the opening week (the weather is about to shift). The mystery is why Djokovic preferred the day session to the comparative cool of the evening. He opened in the night session on Sunday, beating Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, but reportedly felt the late finish disrupted his recovery and sleep patterns.
He told the Serbian media before the Fonseca match that the ball reacted differently in day and night sessions and that he and his team were discussing their options and what time slot they would request (there are no guarantees). Perhaps the quicker day conditions were more appealing despite Fonseca’s power, but though Djokovic solved his endurance issues long ago, the heat has not been his ally through the years. To see him flushed, gasping for air and enveloping himself in all manner of ice towels and ice packs on changeovers was to question his decision if not his mettle.
“I don’t believe I made any big mistakes, given how outstandingly he played,” Djokovic said. “Kudos to him. There’s regret and disappointment. I lost energy in the third set….There are times I wish I was 19 years old on the court, but that’s how it is.”
The teenager looked so much fresher down the stretch than the 39-year-old, and so it has gone in 2026. Djokovic has played little and his other three losses this season have come against 22-year-old Alcaraz in the Australian Open final; 24-year-old Jack Draper in Indian Wells and 20-year-old Prizmic in Rome.
In all four defeats, Djokovic won the opening set. Such reversals would surely not have happened in his prime.
“I felt him a little bit more tired and that gave me more hope to keep finding the solutions in the game,” Fonseca said.
“In the first two sets it was difficult for me,” Fonseca said. “Nothing was going well. I was missing some opportunities, missing some easy shots. I think in the third set, I started hitting more deep returns and going more aggressive with margin, became a little bit more solid and constructing a little bit better the points…staying a bit more aggressive with consistency.”
It was such a fine line. Djokovic could have finished him off in the fourth set. He was two points away with Fonseca serving at 4-5 and 30-all. Djokovic hit a trademark deep return and settled into the sort of baseline duel that has so often gone his way. Fonseca chose to break the pattern and embrace the risk: ripping a backhand winner down the line and moaning with delight and release as it landed. It was 40-30 and Djokovic applied pressure again by winning the next point with a swing volley. He was two points away again, and this time Fonseca snuck into net after redirecting another good return. Djokovic, surprised, missed a rushed backhand pass into the net.
It was soon 5-all and then after two edgy games, two sets apiece after nearly four hours. Djokovic headed to the locker room to change and perhaps have one of his traditional chats with the man in the mirror.
When he returned, he jumped out to a 3-1 lead, but he could not hold the line. Fonseca broke him back, cranking up his forehand, and then stayed on the front foot, finally breaking Djokovic again in the 11th game with a drop shot that the weary Serb could not muster the energy to chase.
It was time to serve for the upset at 6-5: a daunting task for anyone against Djokovic, much less for Fonseca in his first match on the Chatrier Court and his first match against a champion he had grown up admiring from afar.
Slamming the door is not the same challenge as prying it open, and when Djokovic got a break point at 30-40, the wolf was ready to pounce, even at 39.
But Djokovic never got to touch another ball. Ace to save break point. Ace to get to match point. Ace to win it.
Too good and surely a sign of bigger things to come, maybe even next week, but he faces Casper Ruud, a two-time French Open finalist, in the fourth round, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves, which seems sage advice to the men’s field considering how much is at stake.
Only two top 10 players remain: Alexander Zverev and Felix Auger-Aliassime. No man left has won a Grand Slam singles title, which has never been the case in the round-of-16 at a major in the Open era.
Everyone left understands how rare an opportunity this is, and Djokovic, still chasing that ever-more elusive 25th major, understands how rare an opportunity it was. Even broaching the topic seemed painful to him on Friday. night, and when asked if he would be back at Roland Garros again, he answered “I don’t know”.
He said much the same thing last year, too, and yet here he was again in the Paris spring and in the autumn of his grand career, pushing his limits and expanding our sense of the possible.
“What an idol we have,” Fonseca said after they had embraced at the net.
But the generation gap keeps growing.
CC
P.S. I am at Roland Garros until the finish and am happy to sign my books for those who can track me down. The paperback English edition of THE WARRIOR, my biography of Nadal, has just published in the United Kingdom and the timing seems right. Roland Garros is in full swing, and Nadal’s documentary, in which I make an appearance, is out on Netflix. I’ve written a new afterword for this UK edition, and you can order it through Hachette or Waterstones or any other bookseller you prefer. There is, of course, a lot of Djokovic in it.
Merci for being here everyone!