Novak Djokovic was the boulder, Taylor Fritz was Sisyphus

It has to be hard enough to work through the mental gymnastics it takes to take the court against Novak Djokovic, convinced you can win. That’s what professional athletes do, of course, it’s part of the job. But they’re also still human, and it gets hard to shut out the list that makes Djokovic the most accomplished male player in history. Whatever frenzy a player whips himself into in his mind, once they stare out over the other side of the net they’re still going to see the most Grand Slams in history, with a rep of never having an off-day and needing to grind for four to five hours to beat him. That’s the buy-in.

It must be even harder for someone like Taylor Fritz before last night’s Australian Open quarterfinal, as Fritz was carrying the added burden of having getting domed by Djokovic eight previous times. Worse yet, of the 20 sets they had played against each other, Fritz had claimed only two, and that was in one match. No matter how hard Fritz has worked (and he has!) and no matter how good he is (really good!), that’s a lot to put in a buried lockbox before a match begins.

For a good two and a half hours, though, it looked like Fritz had put that all away and stared Djokovic in the eye. Problem was, the match went on for another hour and 15 minutes, where Djokovic did all the staring. Fritz played one of the best matches of his career, and it got him a 7-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 loss.

The tone for the match was set in the very first game, which took 15 minutes, encompassed 23 points, and saw Fritz fight off three break points for Djokovic. While Fritz has worked hard on his movement — his 6-5 frame used to be pretty gangly out there — and is trying to force himself to come to the net more to compliment his sound cannon serve and forehand, neither of those aspects of his game are at a point where he felt comfortable attacking Djokovic with them regularly. Which meant he had to engage in the kind of dragged-into-deep-water rallies that Djoker uses to drown everyone that’s come before him. Fritz was able to mix in some sneaky drop shots and did make his way to net semi-regularly (and did pretty well, going 19/29 there), but for the first two sets a fair amount of the points looked like this:

And yet, for two sets Fritz was every bit Djokovic’s equal. He had two set points in the first set on Djokovic’s serve. He repelled Djokovic’s first 16 (!) break points through a combination of grinding out rallies and his weapon of a first serve. And that’s against the greatest returner the game has ever seen. To save that avalanche of break points against that guy drifts into phantom tollbooth absurdity.

Fritz’s improved movement allowed him to not only settle into long rallies with Djokovic, but come out on top of enough of them to win the second set, including finding angles like this that shouldn’t exist:

And that march-of-death rally was to fend off yet another breakpoint against Fritz, who piled up 21 winners in both the first two sets, paired with an absurdly clean nine unforced errors in the second set. While his ranking has dipped, based on this display it was easy to see how Fritz has gotten to No. 5 in the world and easy to see him getting around there again.

But it’s still Djokovic. Someone can play the best tennis of their life for two hours and all they’ll find is that they’re on equal footing. And they can look at Djokovic and think he looks a little fatigued, slightly ropey, and know that inside he’s smiling brightly because he’s got his opponent exactly where he wants them. Those two set points Fritz missed in the first set . . . you can’t miss the bear.

From the dawn of the third hour and third set on, the returns of serve metronomically end up at the server’s ankles. Those endless rallies from before turn the legs into paper mache, meaning the ones to come are too much to ask, all the while Djokovic still looks like he’s breezing through them as his shots off each wing still land within a couple feet of the baseline. The lines seem to expand and contract to whatever fit he needs. Fritz needed to win each point two or three times, which eventually an empty gas tank won’t allow.

There must come a point when Djokovic getting the last break of serve he needs feels like relief, no matter the desire to win. Knowing that you’ll soon be free of this torture, even if it means a loss. That the suffocation will end, even if it means you’re out of air.

And now Fritz will have to carry a ninth loss to him out onto the court the next time they play. If Fritz ever wants to see a Grand Slam semifinal or championship, he’s going to have to carry it even better than he carried the eight previous. He did it brilliantly, and it got him a ninth.

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