By all accounts, Novak Djokovic was on his way home. Or at least thinking about it, what time the plane would leave, is there any food in the fridge. That’s because the 24-time Grand Slam Champion tennis player was down two sets to none to Lorenzo Musetti in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open earlier today. There was nothing in Djokovic’s game that would suggest a turnaround was imminent, or that Novak might go another three sets into the wee hours of the morning to pull what oddly would be considered an upset.
Fortunately for him, he didn’t have to. Because somewhere around the second game of the third set, Musetti began to noticeably struggle to move, and would eventually call a medical timeout after dropping a service game while moving more like a Sunday rec league player than the world’s number five. By the fifth game, Musetti called it a day, retiring from the match as they say, leaving on the table what seemed like a glide path to the semifinals of the Open and a high-profile match with the world’s number one Jannik Sinner.
What’s most interesting about Djokovic’s win, and he acknowledged the injustice of it, is that this was the second victory in a row like this. Only in the round of 16, he didn’t even need to take to the court, as his opponent Jacub Mensik withdrew the day before with an abdominal injury. Which means that Novak Djokovic has advanced two rounds in the Australian Open into the semifinals without winning a single set.
This isn’t about Novak, or whether it’s fair that he’s advancing despite not earning it, so to speak. There are plenty of folks who aren’t big fans, but I’ll leave that to a different day. This is more about the idea of the forfeit, the medical withdrawal, or what in tennis they call a walkover. It’s the idea of winning without playing, or losing only because of the grace of misfortune. It’s the remarkable letdown of going from intense competition to nothing at all.
In some regards, retirements or walkovers are both fairly rare and common in tennis majors, depending on your perspective. It looks like there’s only been around three walkovers and seven retirements in Grand Slam singles finals history. That’s not a lot. In last year’s US Open, there were nine walkovers and two retirements for men’s and women’s singles combined. That’s out of 254 total matches. Again, given the toll on the human body, the chance for some kind of virus or food poisoning, or whatever else might come up, I’d say that’s a decent win rate. I’d also suggest that unlike most professions, in a sport like pro tennis, it’s hard to go to work much less than 100%, as you’d likely lose every point. So it’s not like in the office where you could show up sick and kind of sleep your way to 5.
You can only imagine the angst as a player. It’s one thing to lose, it’s a totally different thing to spend years of your life prepping for something only to not even be able to try because your ravioli has some kind of bacteria in it last night. Or your right calf decided it wasn’t up for it today. And while winning is still winning, I can’t imagine too many athletes who see a walkover a much more than a hollow victory – well, and a big check. It’s equally bad for fans. You may have spent years waiting for your day at the Wimbledon semis, and maybe half a year’s salary, only to see someone waive the flag of submission. Talk about anticlimactic.
But perhaps the notion of the walkover, or retirement, and the run to the semis of Novak Djokovic, both unlikely and admittedly not fully earned, is a reminder of what sport really is and its inherent frailty. Elite level sport, especially those that pit individuals against each other, aren’t video games. They’re peaks of human capacity, bodies running on a knife’s edge hoping to be one step or one shot better than the other. And they are expressly human – not robotic as they may seem, but flesh and blood that, not surprisingly, breaks down. If you want a guaranteed show, go to the movies. Tennis, like all sports, brings the frailty of humanity along with it.
And that is why Novak Djokovic, not Lorenzo Musetti, will play in the semis of the Australian Open. And why for now, he’s not going home.
